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Billionaire Wealth Surges By Over Half Trillion Dollars During the Pandemic
U.S. billionaire's total wealth surged by over $565 billion, an increase of 19.15 percent, since its low point near the beginning of the pandemic, according to calculations to update a report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). The figures date from March 18 - the rough start date of the pandemic shutdown, when most federal and state economic restrictions were in place. During the same 11 weeks, 42.6 million US workers filed for unemployment (1.877 million in the last week).
WASHINGTON
U.S. billionaire's total wealth surged by over $565 billion, an increase of 19.15 percent, since its low point near the beginning of the pandemic, according to calculations to update a report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). The figures date from March 18 - the rough start date of the pandemic shutdown, when most federal and state economic restrictions were in place. During the same 11 weeks, 42.6 million US workers filed for unemployment (1.877 million in the last week). The number of workers receiving jobless benefits is holding steady at 21.5 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"In a turbulent week in the life of the nation, these statistics remind us that we are more economically and racially divided than at any time in decades," said Chuck Collins, a co-author of the report, Billionaire Bonanza 2020. "Our moral, economic and physical health as a society depends on building a post-pandemic economy that works for everyone, not just the billionaire class. Surging billionaire wealth juxtaposed with the suffering and plight of millions undermines the social solidarity required for us to recover together in the years ahead."
According to IPS calculations, during the past week, the U.S. billionaire class experienced a $79 billion jump in total wealth, an increase of 2.3 percent. For the group, May 27 wealth was $3,432,979,108,000. At market close yesterday, June 3, total wealth was $3,512,041,310,000.
A graphic showing billionaire wealth vs number of unemployed may be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D1WXrRsOKZv67GoN18CiDYR7h5TO9N0R/view?usp=sharing or on this page: https://inequality.org/billionaire-bonanza-2020-updates/.
As markets have risen since the start of the pandemic, certain individual fortunes have surged significantly over market gains. In the eleven weeks since March 18, these billionaires have seen their wealth accelerate:
Jeff Bezos - up $36.2bn
Mark Zuckerberg - up $30.1bn
Elon Musk - up $14.1bn
Sergey Brin - up $13.9bn
Larry Page - up $13.7bn
Steve Ballmer - up $13.3bn
MacKenzie Bezos - up $12.6bn
Michael Bloomberg - up $12.1bn
Bill Gates - up $11.8bn
Phil Knight - up $11.6bn
Larry Ellison - up $8.5bn
Warren Buffett - up $7.7bn
Michael Dell - up $7.6bn
Sheldon Adelson - up $6.1 billion
Editor Notes:
NOTE: IPS uses March 18 as a date for tracking wealth because that is the date tied to this year's annual Forbes Global Billionaire survey, published on April 7. This year Forbes reported that total U.S. billionaire wealth had declined from its 2019 levels, from $3.111 trillion down to $2.947 trillion. But within weeks, IPS's Billionaire Bonanza 2020 report found these losses were erased. As of May 28, total U.S. billionaire wealth is $3.439 trillion, not only a $485 billion increase from March 18, but a $328 billion increase over last year's Forbes 2019 global billionaire survey.
Methodology: Original calculations are based on IPS analysis of data provided by Forbes' Global Billionaires List. Forbes maintains a real-time assessment of billionaire wealth. Every Wednesday, after markets close, IPS consults that data set and calculates the total net worth of billionaires in the United States. Unemployment data are from the U.S. Dept of Labor.
Read more about IPS's methodology in the report and in this FACT CHECK by USA Today.
Institute for Policy Studies turns Ideas into Action for Peace, Justice and the Environment. We strengthen social movements with independent research, visionary thinking, and links to the grassroots, scholars and elected officials. I.F. Stone once called IPS "the think tank for the rest of us." Since 1963, we have empowered people to build healthy and democratic societies in communities, the US, and the world. Click here to learn more, or read the latest below.
LATEST NEWS
'Economic Warfare': Cuba Faces Island-Wide Blackout Amid Illegal Trump Blockade
"While we're busy destroying the Gulf, our side project is implementing a total siege on the island of Cuba," said one progressive critic. "Unbelievably cruel."
Mar 16, 2026
Cuba faced an island-wide blackout on Monday amid an energy crisis resulting from President Donald Trump's decision to ramp up the United States' decadeslong and legally contested blockade of the Caribbean country by cutting off shipments of Venezuelan oil.
"A total disconnection" of the island's electrical system had occurred, but "the causes are being investigated, and protocols for restoration are beginning to be activated," the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines said on social media. It later added that "no faults" were reported in the units operating when the grid collapsed, and "the restoration process continues."
While Cuba has endured power outages in recent years that officials and experts have blamed on both the condition of the country's system and US sanctions, there have been multiple major blackouts in recent months, since Trump sent soldiers to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and seized control of Venezuela's nationalized oil industry.
"Officials in the US [government] must be feeling very happy by the harm caused to every Cuban family," Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told CNN of the latest outage. The network noted that it had reached out to the White House for comment.
Blasting the blackout as "a direct consequence of Trump's economic warfare," Manolo De Los Santos of The People's Forum in New York City said on social media Monday that "the US has deliberately cut off fuel, spare parts, and equipment, crippling an already fragile grid. It's a genocidal siege, designed to starve and break the Cuban people into submission."
Similarly highlighting how "decades of US sanctions have made it harder for Cuba to access the fuel, equipment, and financing needed to maintain its energy grid," New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-25), a democratic socialist, declared that "it's time to end the blockade and pursue diplomacy."
The blackout on the island of nearly 11 million people came after Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel publicly confirmed on Friday that his government recently held "sensitive" talks with the Trump administration "to determine the willingness of both parties to take concrete actions for the benefit of the people of both countries."
Specifically, according to The Associated Press, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and longtime supporter of regime change on the island—and top aides met with Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro on the sidelines of a Caribbean Community leaders meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis last month.
During his Friday remarks to reporters, Díaz-Canel also emphasized the impacts of Cuba not receiving oil shipments for over three months, including disruptions to communications, education, healthcare, and transportation across the island.
While Trump was speaking with reporters on Monday, he called Cuba a "failed nation," and claimed that "Cuba also wants to make a deal, and I think we will pretty soon, either make a deal or do whatever we have to do." He also signaled that any such action would come after the illegal war his administration and Israel are waging on Iran.
Although Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) recently helped Senate Republicans block Sen. Tim Kaine's (D-Va.) war powers resolution intended to halt Trump's assault on Iran, Kaine has now partnered with Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) for a similar measure on Cuba.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) took to social media on Monday to weigh in on the grid collapse: "Cuba has gone dark. Trump's vindictive oil embargo—along with a sanctions regime that has starved Cuba of opportunities to develop its solar and wind—is depriving innocent Cuban citizens of basic necessities and creating a humanitarian crisis. Trump must end the embargo."
Markey and two other Massachusetts Democrats, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jim McGovern, had previously written to Trump in February to call for an end to the oil embargo, stressing that "Cuba poses no credible national security threat to the United States," and "the overt strategy of choking off oil imports to the island is inflicting severe hardship on the Cuban people, who rely on imported fuel for electricity, transportation, healthcare, and clean water."
"Taking action that sparks a humanitarian crisis as a means of leverage is not a strategy that results in long-term success or reflects who we are as Americans," they argued. "Policies that intensify fuel shortages, cripple essential services, and deepen economic desperation risk destabilizing not only Cuba, but the broader Caribbean region."
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Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Trump Stripping of Protections From Haitian and Syrian Migrants Fleeing War
UN experts say both countries are still in the midst of extreme violence and that those with protected status would face dangers if forced to return.
Mar 16, 2026
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments next month over whether the Trump administration can strip legal status from migrants from Haiti and Syria who have been given temporary protection after fleeing war.
The court said on Monday that it would not grant the Trump administration emergency requests demanding that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for migrants from the two countries be immediately lifted.
For the time being, this means that more than 350,000 people from these two countries can continue to live and work legally in the United States until a ruling is reached. The order set oral arguments in the case to take place in the last week of April.
The court has previously sided with the Trump administration in its bid to strip similar protections from around 600,000 Venezuelan nationals, putting them at risk of deportation.
But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that there is "one notable distinction" between the case surrounding Venezuelan migrants and those from Syria and Haiti.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is required to make its determinations about terminating TPS based on whether conditions in a specific country have improved enough that they would be safe to return. This includes consulting with other government departments, such as the State Department.
Unlike in the Venezuela case, Reichlin-Melnick said there is a "factual record showing that the Trump administration completely failed to do what is required by the law; actually consider the country conditions" in the case of Haiti or Syria.
He highlighted the opinion from US District Judge Ana C. Reyes, who last month ruled that the Trump administration's attempt to strip Haitians of their status was invalid because they'd "ignored Congress' requirement" to consult with other agencies to determine the conditions in the country, which has in recent years been ravaged by a gang war that killed more than 8,000 people in 2025 and has resulted in widespread instability and displacement in the country.
She noted that the only "consultation" conducted by the Trump administration was with a DHS staffer who emailed a State Department staffer, asking him to advise DHS on the matter on the same day a court first allowed them to re-review the status of Haitians.
The State staffer responded in less than an hour, stating definitively that "State believes that there would be no foreign policy concerns with respect to a change in the TPS statue [sic.] of Haiti." An attorney for the government later confirmed that "no other agency was consulted about the decision."
Moreover, the judge pointed to a social media post from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem three days after Haitians had their TPS status formally stripped, referring to them and other immigrants as "killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies," as well as "foreign invaders." This, the judge said, suggested the decision was made in part based on "racial animus."
Following a 10-day trip to Haiti, William O'Neill, the United Nations-designated expert on human rights in the country, said on Monday that the humanitarian situation there is "dire and catastrophic" and is probably worse now than when Haitians were initially granted TPS in the US back in 2010 following a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and inflicted widespread destruction and disease.
If the roughly 300,000 Haitians currently living under TPS were suddenly deported, he said, many would have nowhere safe to go in the war-ravaged country.
"Where would they go?" he asked. "The Haitians who are currently internally displaced can barely survive now.”
In November, another federal judge blocked DHS from stripping Syrians of status for failing to adequately evaluate the conditions in that country, where President Bashar al-Assad had been overthrown less than a year prior, igniting further instability after more than a decade of chaotic civil war.
A report from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic on Friday described ongoing sectarian violence in the country, as well as arbitrary detentions, torture, and extrajudicial killings.
According to a September report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by fighting and extrajudicial executions since Assad's ouster in December 2024.
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Top Dems Refer Kristi Noem to Trump DOJ for Prosecution Over Perjury Allegations
"Secretary Noem made a series of demonstrably false statements in a brazen attempt to undermine critical congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security."
Mar 16, 2026
Two Democratic congressional leaders on Monday said they had "low expectations" for President Donald Trump's Department of Justice to examine alleged perjury by ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but they noted that the statute of limitations for making false statements to Congress is five years as they referred her for an investigation—meaning Noem's recent remarks about her department's operations under her leadership could be probed after Trump leaves office.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi days after Noem testified before two panels earlier this month—proceedings that came just before Trump announced he was firing the secretary.
Noem, who will officially leave office at the end of the month, has presided over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as Trump has embarked on his mass deportation plan—deploying armed federal agents to cities across the US, resulting in the deaths of more than two dozen people including at least three US citizens, sending hundreds of people to a notorious prison in El Salvador against a judge's orders, and detaining tens of thousands of people in centers known for abuse and neglect.
Those subjects were all addressed at the hearings in which Noem testified on March 3 and 4, and Durbin and Raskin argued in their letter to Bondi that the secretary's comments on the issues could make her liable for a federal crime.
"After months of evading our committees’ requests to testify in routine oversight hearings, Secretary Noem made a series of demonstrably false statements in a brazen attempt to undermine critical congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security," wrote the lawmakers. "Making false statements to Congress, and making false statements under oath, are federal crimes."
Noem repeatedly told the committees that under her leadership, DHS "absolutely" complies with federal court orders, and persisted in that claim even after Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) pointed out that days earlier, Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz in the District Court of Minnesota had identified 210 instances of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violating court orders. The violations noted by the judge only represented those that took place between December 2025-February 2026 in the state of Minnesota.
Schiltz is one of several judges who have determined DHS and its underlying agencies have defied court orders, including in cases when judges have ordered the immediate release of immigrants who were held without due process or on false pretenses. The fact that Noem repeatedly told lawmakers that "we comply with all federal court orders" could violate federal statutes including 18 USC §1001, said Durbin and Raskin.
Noem was also asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) about a $220 million advertising campaign that featured her prominently in what she said was an effort by Trump to get "the message out" about her agency's anti-immigration operations. The president denied on the day he fired Noem that he had known anything about the campaign, but aside from that discrepancy, Durbin and Raskin said the outgoing secretary may have falsely stated that there was a competitive bidding process for the campaign.
Noem was confronted with evidence during one of the hearings that one contractor, Safe America Media, had received $143 million to produce the campaign. But she said repeatedly that "there was no involvement whatsoever of anybody that is on the political appointee side of this position on that media contract."
New reporting has shown that Noem actually "handpick[ed]" four companies that were politically connected to the secretary and her allies for the ad campaign.
At both the Senate and House hearings, Noem was asked whether DHS has detained US citizens since Trump took office for his second term last year. She responded definitively in the negative at both hearings—making "demonstrably false" statements, said Durbin and Raskin.
At least 170 US citizens were wrongfully detained in the first six months of Trump's crackdown, and during "Operation Midway Blitz" in Durbin's home state, a 15-year-old, a man who had presented his birth certificate and ID to prove his citizenship, and members of Chicago Alderman Mike Rodriguez's staff were among those who were detained.
Finally, the two Democrats accused Noem of perjuring herself when she responded to questions about conditions in ICE detention centers, claiming that the facilities provide "medical care to all of our detainees [and] three nutritious meals a day," and that detention standards are "the highest in the nation."
Numerous reports have pointed to medical neglect and abuse—some that could amount to torture, according to Amnesty International—at detention centers across the country. At least 48 people have died in these ICE facilities since January 2025. A family's account of conditions at Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, which is run by private prison contractor CoreCivic, detailed moldy and worm-infested food and medical neglect, with the center ignoring a doctor's referral for a comprehensive scan to examine a lump under the mother's rib cage.
"There is ample evidence that ICE is neither meeting its own detention standards, nor providing anything that resembles a nutritious meal," wrote Durbin and Raskin. "ICE internal audits have documented significant failures to meet medical care standards."
The lawmakers urged Bondi to respond to their referral promptly while noting that they had "low expectations" that the Trump administration would hold Noem accountable.
At the House hearing earlier this month, Balint issued a warning to Noem that Americans "will get accountability" sooner or later.
One day, Kristi Noem won’t have Trump to hide behind.
She will be held accountable for the terror she and her employees have unleashed on the American people. pic.twitter.com/qVbz8Rd7Jy
— Rep. Becca Balint (@RepBeccaB) March 4, 2026
"You are the secretary of DHS—for now," said Balint. "And you think you're immune from accountability, but I promise you this: One day, [Trump] is not going to be president anymore. He is not going to be in charge, and when that day comes, we will still be here."
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