The average American’s net worth is $620,654, but that number means little. Here’s the figure that counts
As of 2024, the average American had a net worth of $620,654, according to a recent report on global wealth by UBS. (1) But if that number sounds surprisingly high and disconnected from your lived experience, there’s a reason for that.
Averages are calculated by taking a total amount and dividing it by the number of individuals in a dataset. However, this metric is easily skewed by a few individuals who are complete outliers.
For instance, if you (with the average American net worth) and Elon Musk enter an elevator together, the average net worth on that elevator — at least, at the time of this writing — is about $224 billion. (2)
Your personal net worth may be nowhere close to that, but the fact that there are only two individuals in this scenario means the figure is skewed upwards — and you may know few people within your friend circle or family who have $620,654 in total wealth, despite what the report says.
With this in mind, UBS also tracked another measure that could be closer to reality for everyday Americans: median wealth.
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Median wealth offers a clearer picture
Unlike averages, median calculations are not skewed by a few outliers. Instead of taking total wealth across a country and dividing it by the country’s total population, median wealth is calculated by arranging all adults in either ascending or descending order of net worth and picking the person exactly in the middle for a fairer representation.
In other words, if you have median wealth, then precisely 50% of the country has less than you and 50% has more than you.
As of 2024, median net worth in America is just $124,041, according to UBS. That’s an astonishing five times lower than the average net worth of $620,654.
In fact, by this measure, America is only the 15th wealthiest country in the world, lagging behind Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Italy. By comparison, the U.S. is the second wealthiest country based on average wealth.
This immense gap between average and median wealth is a reflection of America’s exceptionally high wealth inequality.
At the end of 2024, more than two-thirds (67%) of the total household wealth across the country was held by just the top 10% of households, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (3) Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of households hold just 2.5% of total wealth.
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