Here’s How Much You Need to Make a Year to Be in the 1%
If you want to be part of America’s 1 percent, you better ask for a raise.
The threshold for becoming a member of the country’s ultra-wealthy now sits at $650,000 a year, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. That’s according to a new study from the financial information provider SmartAsset, which converted 2020 data from the IRS into May 2023 dollars using the Consumer Price Index.
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While that six-figure salary is the average for the entire United States, several states have a much higher bar to entry, with the top 10 states all requiring more than that $650,000-a-year figure. On top is Connecticut, where you better be bringing in a whopping $952,902 a year. Massachusetts is the only other state with a threshold above the $900,000 mark, sitting at $903,401. Rounding out the top five are California ($844,266), New Jersey ($817,346), and Washington ($804,853).
Surprisingly, New York sits at No. 6 in the ranking, with a minimum of $776,662 a year necessary to be considered a 1 percenter. While many states saw their threshold rise over the past year, New York was stagnant compared with 2022. “It’s easier to get into the 1 percent in New York than it ever has been,” Jaclyn DeJohn, the managing director of economic analysis at SmartAsset, told Bloomberg.
After New York, you’re looking at steep numbers in Colorado ($709,092), Florida ($694,987), Illinois ($660,810), and New Hampshire ($659,037). And if Washington, D.C., were a state, it would blow the other 50 out of the water: Residents in the nation’s capital need to make more than $1 million to be considered ultra-wealthy. (Altogether, the upper 1 percent of households in the U.S. contain more than a third of the country’s wealth, according to Congressional Budget Office data cited by Bloomberg.)
Of course, some states have a much lower threshold, although the annual salary still reaches into the mid-six figures. West Virginia sits at the bottom of the ranking, with $367,582 needed to break into the 1 percent, and Mississippi is just above that, with $381,919. Let that give you something to aspire to, whether you’re aiming to be a 1 percenter in the Mountain State or the Constitution State.
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