The joint wealth of American billionaires, involving Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk, raised nearly 10% amid COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report published by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
The wealth surge of America’s billionaires happened during a period that observed as many as 22 mn Americans file for unemployment.
Even as the wider economy confronted with a great recession, tech and stay at home stuffs such as Zoom have reformed their net worth in recent days, due to a surge in usage of video conferencing and remote work technology, thus increasing the net worth of billionaire founders with holdings in those companies.
“This is the tale of two pandemics, with very unequal sacrifice,” stated Chuck Collins, a co-author of the report.
During the period between January 1 to April 10 this year, 34 of the nation’s wealthiest billionaires have shown their net worth spike by tens of millions of dollars, the report stated.
According to the IPS report, eight of these billionaires including Bezos, Zoom Video Communications Inc founder Eric Yuan and Musk gained a $1-billion jump in their total net worth.
In the last decade, U.S. billionaire wealth increased over 80.6% adjusted for inflation, the report stated.