The past few months may be financially tough for most Americans but this is not the case with these American billionaires. In a report published by the Institute for Policy Studies, US billionaires collectively gained $565 billion during this time.
“This represents a 19% gain from the point around the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.”
The total wealth of American billionaires is now at $3.6 trillion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos alone has gained $36.2 billion from March 18. This stands in stark contrast to the almost 43 million Americans who filed for unemployment benefits since the outbreak of the health crisis.
With help from the Federal Reserve, the stock market has made a remarkable recovery despite the pandemic. Wall Street has rebounded quickly, as evidenced by Nasdaq about to hit record highs. With the Federal Reserve’s promise to buy an unlimited volume of bonds and the slashing of interest rates to zero, investors have been gambling on equities, which have largely benefitted big tech companies.
Moreover, with the imposition of quarantine and social distancing measures, more and more Americans have turned to technology to work and to stay connected.
As it is, many of the big tech companies are thriving during this pandemic. For example, the health crisis has inevitably made companies like Amazon highly essential. In fact, its shares unsurprisingly spiked 47% from its low point in March.
Facebook is also one of the gainers. The net worth of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, increased by $30.1 billion since mid-March.
Other billionaires who amassed more wealth since March. Among them are former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, and Elon Musk of Tesla. Each gained more than $13 billion during this pandemic.
This report by the Institute for Policy Studies calculated the wealth of American billionaires using the Forbes Global Billionaires Lists data. The starting date of March 18 in the calculations is tied to the Forbes Global Billionaire survey for this year and it was also around this time when health restrictions were imposed by the federal government.
