Elon Musk, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg are also in the richest 0.00001 percent
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NEED TO KNOW
- 19 American households accumulated $1 trillion of wealth in 2024
- Those included in the richest 0.00001 percent include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Jeff Bezos
- The analysis was conducted by economist Gabriel Zucman and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal
The rich are getting richer.
Nineteen American households accumulated $1 trillion of wealth in 2024, according to an analysis reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Those who make up the richest 0.00001 percent include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Economist Gabriel Zucman, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Paris School of Economics, found that the shared total of household wealth for the 19 households that made up the elusive group jumped about $2.6 trillion from 2023 to 2024.
Zucman said the one-year increase was the biggest one to date, per The Wall Street Journal.
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The analysis stated that it took 40 years for the group to grow their household wealth from 0.1 percent in 1982 to 1.2 percent in 2023.
The growth from 2023 to 2024 saw that number increase to 1.8 percent.
Included in the 0.00001 percent are Bezos, who has a net worth of $205B, Gates, whose net worth is $112.8B, and Musk, who tops them both with a net worth of $381.9 billion. Other public figures in the group are Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and businessman Stephen Schwarzman.
According to Zucman, the total amount of household wealth in the United States was about $148 trillion in 2024.
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Musk currently holds the title for the richest person in the world. The entrepreneur broke through on Forbes’ billionaires list in 2012 with a net worth of $2 billion, per Forbes. He climbed the ranking to the third spot eight years later, eclipsing Zuckerberg. Shortly after, he took Gates’ spot as No. 2, The Guardian reported.
By 2024, Bloomberg announced that Musk’s net worth had surpassed the $400 billion mark. He is considered the first to ever reach that level of wealth. However, his worth has since declined.
In March 2025, Musk’s net worth dropped by over $120 billion, following his ties to President Donald Trump.
