Top 1% hold a record 32.5% of household wealth after the largest quarterly rise since 1989

The Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts, released September 18, 2026, put the share of US household net worth held by the wealthiest 1% at 32.5% in the second quarter of 2026. That is the highest reading in a series that begins in the third quarter of 1989, above the prior record of 31.8% set in the fourth quarter of 2025. The share rose 0.8 points from 31.7% in the first quarter, the largest quarterly increase among the 147 quarterly changes in the record; the previous largest were 0.7 points, in the first quarters of 2004 and 2006. The low was 22.4% in the third quarter of 1990, 10.1 points below where it stands now.

The share tends to move with the stock market, because the wealthiest households hold a disproportionate share of corporate equities. SPY rose 14.8% in price over the second quarter of 2026. The two largest quarterly declines in the record came with falling stocks: 1.4 points in the first quarter of 2020, to 29.0%, and 1.0 point in the second quarter of 2022. The share is 3.5 points above that 2020 reading. Two cautions on the data. The Fed restates the whole history with each release, so the record and the ranking of this quarter’s rise describe the September 18, 2026 vintage. And this is a share of net worth, published about a quarter in arrears; it says nothing about the level of anyone’s wealth, and the chart makes no call on markets.