Wealth Gap Persists As The Top One Percent Gain More Post-Pandemic

person holding a handful of 100 dollar bills
Via Flickr
Adé Hennis
October 30, 2023

The Federal Reserve released recent data that showed that the top one percent of American households have increased their share of the country’s household net worth since 2019.

The top one percent held 26.5 percent of household net worth at the end of June, approximately 1.5 percentage points higher than in 2019. It’s also estimated that the top five percent had their share of income grow from 23 percent in 2019 to 23.5 percent in 2022.

In that same three-year span, the bottom one-fifth of American households have had their share of net worth decrease from 7 percent to 6.7. Economist Elise Gould recently stated that "share matters because if profits have been so high, wages could have done even better."

Last month, the Biden administration released information on how it’s attempting to create good-paying jobs, which could help increase wealth shares among households in all classes.

With union strikes recently happening across various industries, it shows that different classes of workers are making an attempt to increase wages, which could help decrease wealth share gaps.

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