The rich have been enjoying unprecedented wealth gains, while workers struggle against sluggish wages and a high cost of living. And the gap is especially stark in one of the country’s most billionaire-dense states.
New York is home to 154 billionaires boasting a collective fortune of $975.7 billion, according to a new report from Oxfam America. Thanks to the state’s position as a financial and investing hub, it’s home to many ultra-rich residents, including Mike Bloomberg ($109 billion) and Stephen Schwarzman ($41.9 billion). And their eye-watering net worths are only growing bigger; over the past year, the wealth of the state’s billionaires increased 11.6%, three times greater than the hourly wage of New York’s private-sector workers. The disparity is worsened by the fact that real average hourly earnings in the state’s private sector have largely stagnated and were even slightly lower in 2025 than before the pandemic, the Oxfam report pointed out.
And at the top of New York’s elite billionaire club, it’s 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’s average private-sector hourly wage 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.
However, the growing economic divide in New York shouldn’t be seen as an anomaly; Oxfam notes this phenomenon is taking hold in all corners of the U.S.
“What we see in New York is consistent with national trends,” Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam America, tells Fortune. “In many ways, we have an economy that’s rigged against working people and in favor of the wealthiest. Past policy choices on issues like tax, corporate power, and workers’ rights have resulted in an economy where the benefits flow upward.”
Why billionaire wealth is skyrocketing in America
Riddell points to a few key factors in the billionaire wealth boom.
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 Oxfam revealed that the 10 richest U.S. billionaires—mostly tech founders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, who reeled in big gains from their investments—added $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 1.1% of the exchange.
Plus, billionaires enjoyed a boost from the Trump administration’s “inequality-fueling” policies, Riddell says.
Last July, President Trump passed his One Big Beautiful Bill, which entails reducing the tax bill of the top 0.1% of earners in the country. By 2027, it’s expected that the statute will shave $311,000 off the tax costs of the ultra-rich, while the poorest Americans—making less than $15,000 annually—will be forced to pay even more in taxes. Riddell explains that through the president’s bill, support for working-class New Yorkers will be cut, while million-dollar earners will be given around a $52,000 “handout” this year.
To make a meaningful difference for working-class New Yorkers, Riddell advises the state’s policymakers to address the inequality through tax increases on the wealthiest and raise revenue for critical public services. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed a 2% increase on the city income tax rate of households earning over $1 million annually.
Americans are barely scraping by—and are critical of the wealth gap
The U.S. is home to more billionaires than any other country in the world, but the average worker isn’t getting a slice of America’s monumental economic success.
Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi, told Fortune last year that lower-income households are “hanging on by their fingertips financially.” 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’s fueling a loneliness crisis, with Americans skipping out on social events and postponing their goals to make ends meet.
“The grip feels more tenuous because no one’s getting hired. You can sustain that for a while, but you can’t sustain that forever. If the layoffs do pick up, that lower-middle-income group is gonna get nailed—and they have no options,” Zandi said in 2025. “They have debt: They have auto debt, they have student loan debt, they may, if they’re lucky, have a mortgage, but they’re gonna struggle, and their world is going to descend into recession pretty quickly.”
And U.S. citizens aren’t blind to the growing divide between the haves and have-nots—they’re critical of extreme wealth. A recent Pew Research survey found that nearly one-in-five Americans think that being a billionaire is “morally wrong,” 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 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%).
