How much does someone really have to make to be part of the “1%” in the U.S.?
According to Axios, Americans would need to make close to $800,000 to join the ranks of this wealth bracket nationally. This estimate is based on adjusted gross income (AGI) reported on tax filings in the 2021 tax year, adjusted to 2024 dollars.
This group keeps getting richer, too. Fortune reported this October that the nation’s 1% holds nearly a third of the nation’s wealth after growing for the past 30 years. Reuters reported Thursday that “significant gains among the super rich in the United States,” has fueled a 17% spike in wealth held by the world’s billionaires.
As the wealthy get wealthier, median household income in the U.S. has recently slipped downward. U.S. Census Bureau data shows that real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a 2.3% decline from the 2021 estimate of $76,330.
Both figures are under 10% of the amount that would bring a household into the 1%. They are also lower than the $107,000 annual income that Oxford Economics determined would be necessary to afford a new single-family home and pay both property taxes and home insurance costs in the third quarter of this year. That’s nearly double the household income required to afford the same thing just a few years ago, in late 2019.
“Only one-third of U.S. households earned enough to afford a home as of last quarter, far fewer than the nearly two-thirds of US households able to do so five years prior,” said Oxford Economics.
In some areas of the U.S., joining the 1% is an even steeper climb, said Axios. Washington D.C. had the highest threshold at $1.22 million, while West Virginia had a significantly lower bar at $426,000.
“The variance between states is tied in part to local economic factors, like job opportunities and wealth concentration,” said Axios.