{"id":176175,"date":"2026-03-26T16:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T16:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/176175\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T16:22:10","slug":"new-york-is-home-to-154-billionaires-together-theyre-worth-975-7-billion-and-some-of-them-are-even-making-2-million-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/176175\/","title":{"rendered":"New York is home to 154 billionaires. Together they’re worth $975.7 billion\u2014and some of them are even making $2 million an hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York is home to 154 billionaires boasting a collective fortune of $975.7 billion, according to a new report<\/a> from Oxfam America. Thanks to the state\u2019s position as a financial and investing hub, it\u2019s home to many ultra-rich residents, including Mike Bloomberg ($109 billion<\/a>) and\u00a0Stephen Schwarzman ($41.9 billion<\/a>). And their eye-watering net worths are only growing bigger; over the past year, the wealth of the state\u2019s billionaires increased 11.6%, three times greater than the hourly wage of New York\u2019s private-sector workers. The disparity is worsened by the fact that real average hourly earnings in the state\u2019s private sector have largely stagnated and were even slightly lower in 2025 than before the pandemic, the Oxfam report pointed out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And at the top of New York\u2019s elite billionaire club, it\u2019s an even steeper drop down to everyone else. The 10 richest New Yorkers gained $42.4 billion over the past year, according to the report. Each of these ultra-rich billionaires gained about $4.2 billion, reeling in about $2 million per hour. Compared to the state\u2019s average private-sector hourly wage<\/a> of $39.62, it would take a typical worker 82,863 years to earn as much as one of the 10 wealthiest did last year on average.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the growing economic divide in New York shouldn\u2019t be seen as an anomaly; Oxfam notes this phenomenon is taking hold in all corners of the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we see in New York is consistent with national trends,\u201d Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam America, tells Fortune. \u201cIn many ways, we have an economy that\u2019s rigged against working people and in favor of the wealthiest. Past policy choices on issues like tax, corporate power, and workers\u2019 rights have resulted in an economy where the benefits flow upward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why billionaire wealth is skyrocketing in America\u00a0<\/p>\n

Riddell points to a few key factors in the billionaire wealth boom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The wealthiest 0.1% of U.S. households hold around a quarter of all U.S. equities, according to Federal Reserve data, enabling them to grow their fortunes by the billions. Last year, a report from<\/a> Oxfam revealed that the 10 richest U.S. billionaires\u2014mostly tech founders like Elon Musk<\/a>, Jeff Bezos<\/a>, and Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>, who reeled in big gains<\/a> from their investments\u2014added $698 billion to their net worths between November 2024 and the same month in 2025. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the U.S. owned just<\/a> 1.1% of the exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus, billionaires enjoyed a boost from the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cinequality-fueling\u201d policies, Riddell says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last July, President Trump passed his One Big Beautiful Bill, which entails reducing<\/a> the tax bill of the top 0.1% of earners in the country. By 2027, it\u2019s expected that the statute will shave $311,000 off the tax costs of the ultra-rich, while the poorest Americans\u2014making less than $15,000 annually\u2014will be forced to pay even more in taxes. Riddell explains that through the president\u2019s bill, support for working-class New Yorkers will be cut, while million-dollar earners will be given around a $52,000 \u201chandout\u201d this year.<\/p>\n

To make a meaningful difference for working-class New Yorkers, Riddell advises the state\u2019s policymakers to address the inequality through tax increases on the wealthiest and raise revenue for critical public services. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> has proposed a<\/a> 2% increase on the city income tax rate of households earning over $1 million annually.<\/p>\n

Americans are barely scraping by\u2014and are critical of the wealth gap<\/p>\n

The U.S. is home to more billionaires than any other country in the world, but the average worker isn\u2019t getting a slice of America\u2019s monumental economic success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moody\u2019s chief economist, Mark Zandi, told Fortune<\/a> last year that lower-income households are \u201changing on by their fingertips financially.\u201d Cost of living is rising, hiring has slowed to a worrying pace, and layoffs are on the rise. The issue has become so dire that it\u2019s fueling a loneliness crisis<\/a>, with Americans skipping out on social events and postponing their goals to make ends meet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grip feels more tenuous because no one\u2019s getting hired. You can sustain that for a while, but you can\u2019t sustain that forever. If the layoffs do pick up, that lower-middle-income group is gonna get nailed\u2014and they have no options,\u201d Zandi said in<\/a> 2025. \u201cThey have debt: They have auto debt, they have student loan debt, they may, if they\u2019re lucky, have a mortgage, but they\u2019re gonna struggle, and their world is going to descend into recession pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

And U.S. citizens aren\u2019t blind to the growing divide between the haves and have-nots\u2014they\u2019re critical of extreme wealth. A recent Pew Research survey found that <\/a>nearly one-in-five Americans think that being a billionaire<\/a> is \u201cmorally wrong,\u201d with Gen Zers leading the outcry. Another 52% of Americans agreed the wealth gap is a very big problem, according to a 2026 report from<\/a> YouGov, and 59% said the government should step in to reduce wealth inequality. Another 62% of citizens said that the tax rate on billionaires is either much too low (46%) or too low (16%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York is home to 154 billionaires boasting a collective fortune of $975.7 billion, according to a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7987,3968,16997,8012,153,40815,10868,22628,4947,9,24,11,10,3577,71539,16999,4945,2780,23022,71540,901,4692,38376,82],"class_list":["post-176175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-billionaires","tag-compensation","tag-cost-of-living","tag-donald-trump","tag-economic-inequality","tag-income-inequality","tag-inequality","tag-investment","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-personal-finance","tag-rich-people","tag-salaries","tag-stock","tag-taxes","tag-u-s-economy","tag-u-s-workers","tag-united-states","tag-wealth","tag-wealth-inequality","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}