Top 1% Share

The top 1% share is the fraction of a quantity (income or wealth, most often) held by the richest one percent of the relevant population. It is the benchmark statistic for tracking economic concentration because it compresses a complicated distribution into a number any reader can hold in their head.

US top 1% wealth share sits near 30% — roughly the level it last reached during the first Gilded Age (1890s–1900s). US top 1% income share is closer to 20% — high by post-war standards but lower than the wealth figure because high earners do not all become high-wealth holders, and asset price appreciation drives wealth concentration faster than wage gains drive income concentration.

The top 1% threshold itself moves over time. In 2025 dollars, the income cutoff for the top 1% is roughly $700,000–$800,000 (varies by source); the wealth cutoff is around $13–14 million. Thin Gold’s Wealth Concentration Tracker tracks the share, not the threshold, because share is the politically meaningful quantity.