You Need at Least $5.8 Million to Join America’s 1%: Report
Becoming a member of the 1 percent is now harder than ever.
In the United States, you need to have at least $5.8 million to sit at the tippy-top, a 15 percent increase from last year, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. That's according to the property broker Knight Frank's 2024 Wealth Report, which outlines how much money you need to break into the 1 percent in nations across the world.
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"Our findings confirm the substantial differences in wealth distribution between countries," Knight Frank said in the report. "Expect greater policy focus on where wealth is located, how it is distributed across economies and how governments can both tax it and encourage its growth."
While Americans need quite a substantial net worth to call themselves part of the 1 percent, they don't have the hardest time reaching that echelon. Monaco has retained its status at the top of the list, with people needing at least $12.8 million, a 3.2 percent jump from the year prior. Luxembourg is next, with a $10.8 million bar, followed by Switzerland with $8.5 million. Then comes the United States , and Singapore rounds out the top five with a $5.2 million requirement.
After the global economy took a dip—thanks in part to Russia's war in Ukraine, which resulted in skyrocketing food and energy prices around the world—we're now seeing markets rebound, at least in the United States and other Western nations. Poorer countries, however, are still struggling, resulting in an even bigger gap between the haves and the have-nots. Monaco's GDP per person, for example, is more than 900 times that of Burundi, according to World Bank data cited by Bloomberg.
And despite people across the world feeling the economic headwinds, the globe's wealthiest seem to have largely avoided any personal downfall. Cumulatively, the 500 richest people in the world saw their wealth increase by $1.5 trillion in 2023. They were led by Elon Musk, the single wealthiest person, who added $95.4 billion to his bank account, for a total net worth of $232 billion. (It's since dropped to $213 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.)
It's still early enough in 2024 that we don't know how this year will shake out, but if the current trends hold, the 1 percent will only continue to get richer as the years go by.
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