America’s 10 richest billionaires added $698 billion to their wealth last year

While the consumer spending share of poor Americans declines and layoffs intensify, the ultra-rich are experiencing an unprecedented increase in wealth.

A new report from Oxfam reveals that the 10 wealthiest billionaires in the US added $698 billion to their net worth last year.

Nearly the entire group of the ultra-rich consists of technology leaders who have profited from the tech and artificial intelligence sectors.

These individuals include Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and Dell founder Michael Dell.

On average, each person on the list of America’s 10 wealthiest earned $69.8 billion last year, which is 833,631 times the amount a typical American household takes home. According to US Census data, the average US household earned just $83,730 last year.

As billionaires become even wealthier, Americans are barely getting by on their meager salaries.

According to the report, more than 40% of the US population (including approximately 50% of children) is considered poor or low-income. Looking at the trend over the last few decades, the gap between the rich and poor is becoming even more pronounced. Between 1989 and 2022, a wealthy US household in the top 1% gained 101 times more wealth than an average household.

In fact, today the top 0.1% owns 12.6% of all assets and 24% of the stock market’s value. On the other hand, the bottom 50% of the US population owns just 1.1% of the stock market’s value.

Women and people of color are the groups most affected by rising inequality. Households headed by men have accumulated, on average, four times more wealth than households headed by women.

The wealth of white households has increased 7.2 times more than that of the average Black household and 6.7 times more than that of a typical Hispanic/Latino household.

Black and Hispanic/Latino households, which make up one-third of the US population, own only 5.8% of the nation’s wealth.

The report warns that the wealth gap in America will widen further due to unemployment and an approaching recession, which it attributes to the Trump administration’s law titled One Big Beautiful Bill.

According to the report, the top 0.0001% now controls more wealth than they did during the “Golden Age” of capitalism.

“The Trump administration risks exponentially accelerating some of the worst trends of the last 45 years,” Oxfam’s research states. “In less than a year, it has already enacted a largely regressive tax reform, major cuts to the social safety net, and significant rollbacks of worker rights.”

This July, President Trump passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, which aims to reduce the tax burden on the country’s highest-earning 0.1%.

By 2027, this law is expected to reduce the tax costs of the ultra-rich by $311,000, while the poorest Americans with annual incomes below $15,000 will be forced to pay more in taxes.

Among the 10 largest economies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US ranks second to last in using its tax and transfer system to combat inequality. Within this group, America has the highest relative poverty rate.

While America is home to more billionaires than any other country in the world, the average US citizen is unable to be a part of this tremendous economic success.

Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told Fortune magazine last month that low-income households are “financially on their tiptoes.”

The cost of living is rising rapidly, high-paying job opportunities are scarce, and layoffs are increasing. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that America is entering a recession; 22 states are already seeing their economies contract and their financial situations strained.

“It’s getting tougher because no one is getting hired,” Zandi says. “You can sustain that for a while, but you can’t sustain it forever. If layoffs pick up, the lower-middle income group will be in a tough spot and have no other options. They have debt: auto debt, student loan debt, maybe mortgage debt if they’re lucky, but they will struggle, and their world will go into recession pretty quickly.”