Updates: Billionaire Wealth, U.S. Job Losses and Pandemic Profiteers

The data in the table above and for all billionaires is available here.

Even among billionaires, wealth is highly concentrated. Roughly $400 billion, or only a little less than half of the total gains, were captured by just the 15 wealthiest on the billionaires list. The top three gainers alone—Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk—enjoyed fully 16% of the spoils, or a collective wealth surge of $137 billion. One billionaire from Michigan, Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans, saw his wealth increase an astonishing 672%, growing from $6.5 billion to $50.2 billion.

The total wealth of all the billionaires—$3.8 trillion today—is two-and-a-half times the $1.5 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, or 165 million Americans.

The $845 billion wealth gain by 643 billionaires over the past six months far exceeds the:

Low-wage workers, people of color and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises because of long-standing racial and gender disparities. Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.

House Democrats passed a relief bill back in May that offered a lifeline to Americans not sharing in the billionaires’ good fortune during the pandemic. Among its provisions:

All of the above data is available in one table here.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have introduced legislation for a 60% tax on the pandemic wealth gains of billionaires between March 18 and the end of the year and use the proceeds to help working Americans cover healthcare costs.

September 4, 2020 update

U.S. Billionaire Wealth Has Surged $970 billion since beginning of Pandemic

Total U.S. billionaire wealth has increased over $970 billion since March 18, 2020, an increase of 32.9 percent over 24 weeks.

On March 18, total U.S. billionaire wealth was $2.947 trillion.  As of September 3,  total U.S. billionaire wealth has risen to $3.917 trillion.

Jeff Bezos total wealth is now $206.4 billion, compared to $113 billion on March 18.

Elon Musk has seen his wealth triple since March 18, rising from $24.6 billion to $93.3 billion.

Since March 18, the number of U.S. billionaires has increased from 614 to 638, an increase of 24 new billionaires.

We date our data to March 18, the day that Forbes published is 2020 annual Global Billionaire Survey.  This date also marks the beginning of the pandemic lockdown in many states, the first unemployment filings over 6 million, and the beginning of Federal Reserve actions to stabilize the economy.  The Institute for Policy Studies and Americans For Tax Reform posted a response to criticisms that we use this start date.  Together, we have been publishing regular updates on billionaire wealth that can be found here.

August 6, 2020 update

U.S. billionaire wealth went up by $685 billion 

Between March 18 and August 5, 2020, the total wealth of U.S. billionaires went up $685 billion (including those that have lost funds), based on an analysis of Forbes data.  U.S. billionaires have total combined wealth of over $3.65 trillion.

Over this same period, over 158,000 people have died from the Covid-19 virus and over 30 million remain on unemployment.

Inspired by the Billionaire Bonanza 2020 report and subsequent reports on billionaire wealth increases, Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced the “Make Billionaires Pay Act.” This Act would levy levying a 60% tax on the growth in wealth of those 467 billionaires whose wealth has increased since March 18^th, based on our Institute for Policy Studies/Americans for Tax Fairness analysis.

The total wealth of this group grew $732 billion, or 30 percent, since the start of the pandemic.  This tax would raise $422 billion if it were levied based on today’s wealth.  Sanders would use the revenue to cover the out-of-pocket medical expenses of all the uninsured and the under-insured Medicare beneficiaries over the next 12 months during the COVID-19 crisis.

“An emergency wealth tax on billionaires is what the body politic requires,” said Chuck Collins, coauthor of Billionaire Bonanza 2020 and director of the Institute for Policy Studies – Program on Inequality. “These billionaires will remain billions richer than a year ago—and a portion of their extreme wealth gains will be deployed to address the pandemic crisis.”

No one worth less than a billion dollars would pay a cent under Sanders’s bill and billionaires who have lost money would be exempt. And even after paying the one-time tax, they would still be 40% richer than they were before the virus hit.

July 23, 2020 update

U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surges by $755 billion After Four Months into the Pandemic

Between March 18 and July 23, U.S. billionaire total wealth has increased over $755 billion, an increase of 25.6 percent.  March 18 marks the beginning of national pandemic lockdowns and the publication of Forbes annual global billionaire survey.

“At this rate, in 6 weeks (by early September), the billionaire class will gain a trillion dollars in wealth since mid-March,” observed Omar Ocampo, researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and coauthor of Billionaire Bonanza 2020.

Total U.S. Billionaire wealth is now $3.7 trillion.

For more billionaire data, see www.billionairesus.org, a new web portal created by the Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Over the same 18 weeks, between March 18 and July 23, over 52.4 million (1.4 million filed in today’s report) people filed for unemployment. Nearly 32 million are currently receiving jobless benefits.

Over 141,660 people have died of Covid-19 in the U.S., as of July 22 at 5 pm, according to the Center for Disease Control.

“The U.S. billionaire class continues to see its wealth surge during a resurgence in the Covid-19 virus,” said Chuck Collins, co-author of Billionaire Bonanza 2020.  This disconnection between their wealth and the economic and health insecurity of the great mass of people is unseemly.”

June 18, 2020 update

U.S. billionaire wealth surges to $584 Billion, or 20 percent, since the beginning of the pandemic

As the Federal Reserve reported during the week of June 10th, more than $6.5 trillion in household wealth vanished during the first three months of this year as the pandemic tightened its hold on the global economy.

“This is the biggest economic shock in the U.S. and in the world, really, in living memory,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell told reporters on June 10th. “We went from the lowest level of unemployment in 50 years to the highest level in close to 90 years, and we did it in two months.”

Since March 18th, the U.S. billionaire class has seen their wealth increase by 20%, or $584 billion, since the rough beginning of the pandemic, as 45.5 million Americans filed for unemployment and the economy cratered, according to a new analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies – Program on Inequality (IPS), building on the IPS Billionaire Bonanza 2020 report.

Overall, between March 18—the rough start date of the pandemic shutdown, when most federal and state economic restrictions were in place—and June 17, the total net worth of the 640-plus U.S. billionaires jumped from $2.948 trillion to $3.531 trillion, based on the two groups’ analysis of Forbes data. Since March 18, the date Forbes released its annual report on billionaires’ wealth, the U.S. added 29 more billionaires, increasing from 614 to 643. During the same three months, over 45.5 million people filed for unemployment, according to the Department of Labor.

The top five billionaires—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison—saw their wealth grow by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%. They captured 17.4% of the total wealth growth of all 600-plus billionaires in the last three months. The fortunes of Bezos and Zuckerberg together grew by nearly $76 billion, or 13% of the $584 billion total.