How did Elon Musk’s wealth triple during Covid-19? America’s 12 biggest billionaires are an average of 40 per cent richer than before the pandemic

Aug 21 , 2020

While plenty of people around the world have suffered financial troubles since the coronavirus pandemic, Elon Musk is now the fourth richest person in the world – and even he looks surprised. Photo: AFP

The numbers are staggering: despite the pandemic, US tech titans like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are richer than ever – with the 12 biggest billionaires in America now collectively worth more than US$1 trillion

America's richest individuals are getting richer and showing no signs of slowing down during the pandemic.

The trend is most prominent among the dozen wealthiest Americans, whose collective net worth passed US$1 trillion last week, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) using data from Forbes and Bloomberg's billionaire trackers.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg now has US$40.8 billion more in his bank account than he did at the start of the year. Photo: AFP

Since March 18, around the time the pandemic first started wreaking havoc on the US economy, the country's top 12 wealthiest people have seen their personal fortunes skyrocket alongside Covid-19 cases, raking in an additional US$283 billion – an increase of nearly 40 per cent – the IPS report found.

By comparison, US household wealth during the first quarter plummeted by 5.6 per cent, the largest drop since the 1950s, and more than half of US households have lost income this year.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, pictured with his two children, has seen his fortune grow by US$11.9 billion in 2020. Photo: AP

Wealth and income inequality in the US had already hit record highs before the pandemic. But in a sign that economic fallout from the coronavirus has further concentrated wealth at the top, data from the US Federal Reserve shows that the top one per cent of Americans actually saw their share of overall wealth in the US decrease from 29.3 per cent to 27.8 per cent during the first quarter of 2020, even as those at the very top saw massive gains.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, pictured with his wife Connie, is worth US$18.8 billion more than last year. Photo: AP

In particular, those gains have gone to the executives and founders of the largest US tech companies, which surged past Wall Street expectations last quarter despite declining revenues. Of the 12 wealthiest Americans included in IPS's analysis, eight hail from the tech industry.