The Top 10% of Earners Have a Median Net Worth of $3,669,900, and It Jumped 31% Since 2022

The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances has a striking number for households at the top of the income ladder. Families in the top 10% of usual income had a median net worth of $3,669,900 in the 2025 survey. That was up from $2,797.5 thousand in 2022, an increase of 31%. The report states all of these figures in 2025 dollars, so the gain is real growth and goes beyond what inflation alone would explain. Over the same period, the typical American family barely moved.

Who Counts as a Top 10% Earner

This group is ranked by income. The Fed sorts families by usual income, meaning what a household normally earns in a typical year (not a boom year or a bad one), and then measures the wealth of the top tenth. So $3,669,900 tells you what the typical high-earning family owns. It is a different measure from the wealth needed to enter the richest 10% of households, and the report does not publish that cutoff. Many readers miss this difference, and it changes how you should use the number.

Why the Average Grew So Much Less

The mean tells a quieter story. Mean net worth for the same top-income group reached $7,681.9 thousand, a gain of just 6% since 2022. The Fed itself notes that the mean “rose less strongly” than the median.

The median is the family standing exactly in the middle of the line. The mean adds up everyone’s wealth and splits it equally, so a few extremely rich households can pull it far above what most people hold. Picture a room of surgeons and senior engineers, then add one founder worth billions. The median hardly moves, but the average jumps. When the median grows much faster than the mean, the middle of the group gained ground while the richest members at the far end grew more slowly.

The report’s asset data helps explain why. Among top-decile earners, 97% held publicly traded stock, and those stockholders saw a real mean increase of about $367,000, or 16%. Homeownership in the group also rose, from 89% to 92%.

Private business equity, which the report shows rises with income, grew far less. For the top decile, business values posted a real mean gain of only about 2%, and the share of top earners owning a business went down. Stocks and homes raised the typical high earner, while slower business equity held back the extremes, where private companies tend to make up a bigger share of wealth.

Top Earners Versus the Wealthiest Families

A separate group, families in the top 10% of net worth, is ranked by what they own rather than what they earn. Its median net worth was $4,935.2 thousand, up 19% since 2022. This group includes retirees with large portfolios and modest paychecks. The top-income group includes high earners who are still building assets. The top earners’ median sits below the top wealth holders’ median, but it grew faster between surveys.

How Far the Typical Family Sits From the Top

For all families, median net worth was $215.9 thousand, a gain of just 2%. The all-family mean rose 7% to $1,241,500, again pulled up by the wealthiest households. The Fed concluded that wealth inequality appears “little changed since 2022”, but the gains were not shared equally across groups.

Families younger than 35 saw median net worth fall 23% to $33,000. Families in the lowest fifth of usual income saw median net worth drop 6%. Families between the 40th and 80th percentiles of usual income did better, with median and mean net worth grows 5% to 15%. The pattern is consistent: the more a family earned, the better its wealth held up.

Where You Stand Depends on Which Ruler You Use

To place yourself, compare against the group that matches how you’re measured:

• By income: If your household already earns at the top, the benchmark is $3,669,900.
• By total wealth: If you want to know what the richest tenth of households typically holds, the benchmark is $4,935.2 thousand.
• By the whole country: For most readers, the all-family median of $215.9 thousand shows where the middle of America sits.

Age matters too. A young household well below the national median is following the same path many young families did between surveys, and wealth generally builds over a working career before leveling off in retirement.

What the Gains Actually Came From

High income turned into wealth through ownership. Nearly every top earner held stock, and almost all owned a home, so when markets and home values rose, their balance sheets rose with them. Families with fewer assets had less to gain from those increases.

For readers, the most accessible way into that kind of ownership is a retirement account. Participation in retirement plans held at around 65% of families, so about a third still lack one. The survey shows what happened from 2022 to 2025. It does not forecast the next survey, which the Fed runs every three years. What it does show is that owning assets that grow in value did most of the work.

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