The top 10% of U.S. income earners grew their wealth by $5 trillion in the second quarter, the latest data from the U.S. Federal Reserve showed, driven by a continued rally in the stock market that benefited the largest investors.
The combined wealth of the top 10% of earners, defined as those with a net worth of more than $2 million, hit $113 trillion in the second quarter, up from $108 trillion in the first quarter, Federal Reserve data showed. This follows three consecutive years of wealth growth for this top group—the top 10% have added more than $40 trillion in wealth since 2020.
All wealth groups saw wealth gains over the past year, with the bottom 50% of Americans seeing their net worth rise 6% in the past 12 months, according to Federal Reserve data. But wealth continues to grow fastest at the top: the top 1% gained $4 trillion, or 7%, over the past year, reaching a record high of $52 trillion in the second quarter.
The top 0.1% of earners saw their wealth increase by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the combined wealth of this group, defined as those with a net worth of at least $46 million, has nearly doubled to more than $23 trillion.
Although wealth at the top has grown faster recently, the share of wealth held by those at the top has generally remained stable for decades. In the second quarter, the top 1% held 29% of total U.S. household wealth, compared with 28% in 2000; the top 10% held 67% of total U.S. household wealth in the quarter, with the remaining 33% held by the bottom 90%.
The biggest driving force for the growth of wealth among the top groups this year comes from the stock market. Over the past year, the value of company stocks and mutual fund shares held by the top 10% of income earners has grown from $39 trillion to more than $44 trillion. The top 10% of U.S. income earners currently own more than 87% of the nation’s corporate stocks and mutual fund shares.
The size of the ultra-high net worth population is also expanding rapidly. Altrata’s latest report shows that the number of U.S. ultra-high-net-worth individuals (those with a net worth of $30 million or more) surged 21% in 2024 and grew another 6.5% in the first half of 2025. Currently, the number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the United States has reached 208,090, accounting for 41% of the total number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the world.
The surge in wealth at the top has led to an increasingly polarized consumer economy - with high-income groups accounting for an ever-increasing share of total consumer spending. Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics pointed out that in the second quarter, consumer spending by the top 10% of income groups accounted for 49.2% of total consumer spending in the United States, hitting the highest level since the data began to be collected in 1989.
At least judging from broad economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) and total consumption, this so-called "K-shaped economy" (referring to the polarization of economic recovery, with some groups growing rapidly and others stagnating) is currently performing reasonably well. But the economy's growing reliance on a handful of top consumers also carries risks.
Zandi said that the stock market is the core driving force for the growth of the wealth of the top groups. If the stock market experiences a deep and sustained decline, it may have a wider chain impact on the overall economy.
"The current economy relies heavily on the consumption of the extremely wealthy, and the consumer confidence of these people is being boosted by the surge in the market value of their stock portfolios," he pointed out. "If the overvalued stock market declines for any reason, causing losses in the stock accounts of the wealthy to exceed profits, they will quickly tighten their consumption, which will pose a serious threat to an already fragile economy."