Wealth of US’s 10 richest billionaires surges $698B

On average, each of them gained $69.8 billion last year, more than 833,600 times what the typical American household earned, according to a report by Oxfam, an international confederation of non-government organizations working to end poverty.

Billionaire Elon Musk in Washington, U.S., on January 20, 2025. Photo by AP

Most of the top 10 richest Americans are in the tech sector, profiting from the boom in artificial intelligence and digital innovation.

The list includes the world’s richest man Elon Musk, who is expected to be the first trillionaire in history.

Others on the list are Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and Dell founder Michael Dell.

While the rich got richer, Oxfam reported that over 40% of Americans, including nearly half of all children, lived in poor or low-income households.

The widening gap between rich and poor has soared in recent decades: between 1989 and 2022, households in the top 1% gained 101 times more wealth than the average family.

The top 0.1% of Americans now control 12.6% of all assets and 24% of the stock market, while the bottom half of the country owns just 1.1% of market shares.

The burden of inequality falls hardest on women and people of color. Male-headed households gained four times more wealth than female-led ones, while white households’ wealth grew 7.2 times faster than that of Black families and 6.7 times faster than Hispanic or Latino households.

Oxfam warns that this gap will continue to widen due to the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, limited job growth, and a looming recession.

America’s inequality has reached levels unseen since the Gilded Age. The wealthiest 0.0001% now control a greater share of the nation’s assets than they did a century ago, while new policies continue to favor the ultra-rich.

"The Trump administration risks exponentially accelerating some of the worst trends of the past 45 years," the Oxfam report states, "having already overseen in less than one year a massively regressive tax reform, major cuts to the social safety net, and significant rollbacks for worker’s rights."

The administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July, slashes taxes for the top 0.1% of earners, while the poorest Americans, earning under $15,000 annually, will pay more.

Although the U.S. boasts more billionaires than any other nation, average citizens are seeing little benefit.

"The data confirms what people across our nation already know instinctively: the new American oligarchy is here," Oxfam America’s President and CEO, Abby Maxman, said in a statement as quoted by The Independent.

"Billionaires and mega-corporations are booming while working families struggle to afford housing, healthcare and groceries."

Ratings agency Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told Fortune last month that lower-income households are "hanging on by their fingertips financially."

"Cost of living is raging, high-paying job opportunities are scarce, and layoffs are on the rise," Zandi said.

"The grip feels more tenuous because no one’s getting hired. You can sustain that for a while, but you can’t sustain that forever."