U.S. adds 736,000 millionaires as stock market surge lifts wealth

The U.S. added 736,000 millionaires in 2025, lifting the total to a record 8.7 million as a stock-market rally swelled paper wealth for Americans already exposed to equities. Capgemini’s World Wealth Report 2026 defines millionaire wealth as investable assets, excluding primary homes, collectibles and other consumer goods, a definition that helps explain why the headline gain can coexist with widespread housing and debt pressure.

The wealth jump was powered by public markets. The S&P 500 rose about 18% last year and the Nasdaq Composite gained about 21%, while wealthy Americans raised their equity allocations from 22% of portfolios to 27%, Capgemini found. That shift concentrated the gains among households with retirement savings, brokerage accounts and the ability to ride out volatility, rather than among families whose balance sheets are tied up in wages, rent and credit-card balances.

The distributional split is stark. Related research describes the typical newly minted millionaire as a Gen Xer or baby boomer, often with much of the fortune sitting in retirement accounts, and says millionaires commonly reach that status in their 50s or 60s. Roughly half of Americans still lack access to a retirement plan, leaving a large share of households outside the market rally that lifted asset prices. Older research also shows homeowners remain far wealthier on average than renters, underscoring how property ownership and stock ownership have become the main gates to wealth accumulation.

The United States remains the center of that wealth machine. UBS said in its 2025 Global Wealth Report that America added 379,000 millionaires in 2024 and reached 23.8 million millionaires, accounting for nearly 40% of the world total. Henley & Partners put the U.S. at about 5.5 million millionaires as of December 2023 using a liquid-investable-wealth measure, alongside 9,850 centi-millionaires and 788 billionaires, reinforcing the country’s lead as the world’s top wealth hub.

Capgemini said the global millionaire population rose to 25.3 million in 2025 and total millionaire wealth hit a record $98.3 trillion. But the gains remain narrowly held: the same market strength that minted new millionaires also widened the gap between households with stock-heavy portfolios and those still locked out of homeownership, retirement savings and the boom in financial assets.