Three years is a long time for a balance sheet, if you are on the right side of it. The median family in America’s top 10% of earners now holds $3,669,900 in net worth, a 31% jump since 2022 that makes the middle of the pack look like it stood still.
The numbers come from the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, which the central bank released on Oct. 9. 24/7 Wall St. put the top-earner figure in the spotlight this weekend. The wealth gap is the story, and it is wider than the headline.
Top 10% net worth: the gap in plain numbers
Start with the median for all American families. It rose just 2% to $215,900. The top-income median rose 31%.
That is not a rising tide lifting all boats. That is a yacht with a head start.
The 2022 figure for the top group was about $2.8 million, so the group added roughly $870,000 in three years. Every dollar figure in the survey is adjusted to 2025 dollars, so those are real gains, not inflation tricks.
Here is where it gets uneven:
- The top 10% by income: median net worth up 31%.
- All families: median net worth up 2%.
- The bottom fifth by income: median net worth down 6% to $14,400.
- Families under 35: median net worth down 23% to $33,000.
- Families 75 and older: median net worth up 37% to $504,900.
In short, the oldest and highest earners pulled ahead. Young families and low earners slipped. The Fed said the pattern stood in contrast to 2019 to 2022, when net worth grew broadly across the distribution.
Why the richest households’ wealth pulled ahead
The top group simply owns more of the things that went up, which explains the wealth of top earners. In the top income decile, 97% hold publicly traded stock. Homeownership in that group rose from 89% to 92%.
Compare that with everyone else. Overall homeownership held at about 66%. Stock market participation among all families actually fell, from 58% to 56%.
If you own both stocks and a house, the last three years were good to you. If you own neither, you mostly watched. And only about 1 in 3 homeowners owns their home outright, so that housing cushion is thinner than it looks.
One caution on the math. The 31% figure is a median, the middle family in the group. The average for the top 10% rose only 6%, to about $7.68 million. Super-wealthy outliers pull that average (they always do), but the typical high-earning family is where the big gain showed up.
Here’s the thing about the top 10% net worth figure
This is not the top 10% by wealth. Those are different groups. The survey ranks families here by usual income, and the top 10% by wealth sits higher, with a median of about $4.9 million.
It also does not mean a six-figure paycheck makes you rich. The high-income net worth of $3.67 million is what these families own, not what they earn. The Fed’s tables did not give an income cutoff for the group, so we will not guess at one.
The income side had its own twist. Median family income rose 7% to $82,200, while mean income fell 6% to $145,200. A typical family got a raise on paper, but wealth, not wages, is what separated the winners.
What it means for your wallet
If you are under 35 and your net worth is shrinking, you are not imagining it. Rent, prices, and a tough housing market took a bigger bite out of young balance sheets. Prices keep climbing, too, as inflation jumped to 3.7% on gas prices. The gap between those who already owned assets and those trying to buy in kept growing.
Fed economists also found that the top 10% of earners account for 28.5% of spending, yet higher-income families do not appear to be pulling away in how much they spend. So the top earners’ wealth is stacking up on balance sheets more than it is flowing into the shops.
Stock exposure matters here, which is why the latest Nasdaq slide and what it means for your 401(k) deserves a look. The Fed has also posted the public data and an interactive chartbook, so expect researchers to keep digging. The next full survey would come in 2028 on the usual three-year cycle.
The question until then: will the next round of gains show up for the people who just lost ground?
