American billionaires grew a massive $637 billion during the coronavirus pandemic. American billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg added the biggest gains to their fortune, with Bezos adding $34.6 billion to his wealth and Zuckerberg adding $25 billion. 600 other billionaires added eye watering amounts of money to their current wealth. The coronavirus pandemic has rewarded many of the country’s wealthiest, even though the economy and labor force struggled in its wake. This is due to a variety of factors. One of these is the fact that many more people are staying home, with many across the globe in lockdown and being forced to stay home.

This in turn led to a huge increase in online shopping and general online use. Those billionaires involved in the tech or online industry saw huge gains due to this, with the lockdowns and the pandemic in general benefitting them greatly. While the American unemployment rate rose significantly due to businesses not having enough traffic to afford workers anymore, the economy dipped accordingly. Billionaires during this time period grew their fortunes. This is also partly because the government lends more aid to larger companies. This allowed them to be bailed out from the damage of the pandemic and to continue to grow despite the struggles that many other small businesses faced.

This government assistance was demonstrated once before during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008. The US government gave a bailout package to banks which helped to keep them afloat. However, after the stock market bounced back, banks had extra cash on hand to invest and allowed them to make a profit while others suffered greatly during the crisis. The same situation played out during the coronavirus pandemic, with government assistance helping those larger companies to stay afloat and allowing the billionaires at the top to continue to grow their wealth disproportionately in comparison to the rest of the country and its economy.