The US has more millionaires now than ever before. According to Finmasters.com, data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report shows that in 2023 there were just under 30 million millionaires in the US, an all-time high.
Given our current population of approximately 337 million people, that means nearly 9% of Americans have a net worth of a million dollars. Can that many of us really be that rich?
Answering this question requires looking at the numbers through an inflation-adjusted lens. Inflation depreciates purchasing power. For example, it takes $1.23 today to purchase what $1.00 bought in 2019. Stated another way, you would need a net worth of $1,230,000 now to equal $1,000,000 of net worth in 2019.
What happens if we go further back in time? According to The Wealth of the Nation by Robert Sobel, in 1929, just before the Great Depression, there were around 21,000 millionaires in the US. (The 1930 census reported a population of 123,202,660.)
In pure dollar terms, there are 1,429 times more millionaires today than in 1929. However, someone today would need $18,410,000 to buy what someone in 1929 could buy with $1 million. To get an “apples to apples” comparison, we would need to find out how many people in the US are worth over $18 million.
While I couldn’t find that exact statistic, according to the Visual Capitalist there are 38,500 people in the US worth over $50 million. A person typically needs a net worth of approximately $11 million to rank in the top 1% of wealth holders in the US. This threshold has fluctuated over time, but according to various sources, it is the generally accepted benchmark in recent years. As of 2024, about 1.3 million households in the U.S. fall into this top 1% category.
My best guess is that there are around 150,000 Americans worth $18 million or more, the equivalent of those worth one million in 1929. That gives us about seven times more inflation-adjusted “true millionaires” today.
