Here’s the Minimum Salary Required To Be Considered in the Top 1% in 2025

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Even if you have money, sometimes it’s hard to feel like you’re rich with the cost of living skyrocketing or factors linked to lifestyle creep. However, if you make a healthy six figures, you might be in the top 1% of wage earners in the United States.

Obviously, this is a great money-making group to be a part of, but depending on where you live, you could still miss the mark and fall into an extremely comfortable category — but not the top 1%.

Here’s how much you need to make in salary alone to be part of the 1% in America, plus how much you need to make to be in the top 5% and top 10% of wage earners.

How Much Does the Top 1% Make?

According to data from the Social Security Administration, you need to make $794,129 annually to be in the top 1% of wage earners in the U.S. This is based on an analysis of the most recently available wage data.

To break this down further, you’d need to earn about $66,178 per month, or about $15,272 per week, to be in the top 1% of income earners.

How Much Do the Top 5% and Top 10% Make?

If you’re not making over $750,000 per year, you might not be part of the 1%. But if you make six figures, there’s a chance you’re in the top 10% of wage earners in the U.S. — or even the top 5%.

Here’s how much you need to make to be in the top 5% and the top 10% in America:

• Top 5% income threshold: $352,773
• Top 10% income threshold: $148,812

As you can see, earning just under $150,000 puts you in the top 10% of all wage earners in the U.S. This doesn’t put you in the elite class of top 1% earners, but you make more, on average, than 90% of American households.

If you make just more than double that amount, you’ll be in the top 5% of American household income.

The Top 1% Income Varies by State

Being a top 1% income earner in the U.S. doesn’t necessarily make you part of the top 1% wage earners in your state. In fact, the salary for the top 1% of earners varies quite a bit — depending on where you live.

GOBankingRates recently crunched the numbers on location-specific data, showing how much you would need to have earned last year to be part of the 1% in your state.

Here’s the salary required to be part of the 1% in the top 10 states:

1. Connecticut: $1,192,947
2. Massachusetts: $1,152,992
3. California: $1,072,248
4. Washington: $1,024,599
5. New Jersey: $1,010,101
6. New York: $999,747
7. Colorado: $896,273
8. Florida: $882,302
9. Wyoming: $872,896
10. New Hampshire: $839,742

As you can see, the numbers vary by more than $350,000 from Connecticut to New Hampshire.

Here’s the data for the 10 lowest-earning states:

41. Ohio: $601,685
42. Iowa: $591,921
43. Alabama: $577,017
44. Indiana: $572,403
45. Oklahoma: $559,981
46. Arkansas: $550,469
47. Kentucky: $532,013
48. New Mexico: $493,013
49. Mississippi: $456,309
50. West Virginia: $435,302

The difference between the top 1% wage earners in Connecticut and West Virginia is over $750,000 per year!

Caitlyn Moorhead contributed to the reporting for this article.

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