Stock market gains minted nearly 1 million new millionaires in 2025, new UBS report says
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- UBS estimated that nearly 1 million people became millionaires in 2025, with the United States accounting for about 441,000 — an average of more than 1,200 new millionaires per day — driven by a U.S. stock market that rose roughly 18% on the year.
- Global personal wealth jumped 10.8% in 2025, the largest increase since 2017 and more than double the rates seen in 2023 and 2024, according to UBS.
- UBS economist James Mazeau pointed to a widening wealth gap: in the U.S., median wealth per adult has fallen nearly 20% from 2020 to 2025 while average wealth has risen about 10% over the same period, net of inflation.
- The world's 58 million millionaires collectively hold approximately $250.6 trillion — nearly half of global wealth — with "everyday millionaires" ($1M–$5M) seeing assets rise 170% since 2000 while their richer peers' collective fortune soared 343%, UBS found.
- Global billionaire wealth surged nearly 25% in the year ending April, but UBS noted the increase stemmed largely from a growing number of billionaires rather than existing ones getting substantially richer.
- U.S. dollar depreciation drove geographic disparities in measured wealth gains, with Europe's, the Middle East's and Africa's combined personal assets growing 17.5% versus 8.5% in the Americas; Turkey added 6.4% more millionaires and the UAE 3.5%, outpacing the U.S.'s 1.9% increase.
- Mazeau told CNBC it remains too early to gauge how the Iran war will affect Middle Eastern high-net-worth investors, noting that outcomes will hinge on international asset allocation and currency exposure.
Why it matters: The headline-grabbing millionaire count obscures a stark distributional split the report quantifies in detail: average U.S. wealth is up 10% since 2020 while median wealth is down 20%, and since 2000 the richest tier of millionaires has outpaced the next tier by more than 2-to-1 (343% vs. 170%). For policymakers and wealth managers, the data reframes 2025's market rally as a transfer upward rather than broad-based prosperity.
