T HEY ARE objects of both fascination and fury. But beyond the annual Sunday Times “Rich List”, which estimates the fortunes of Britain’s wealthiest, relatively little is known about the finances of the economic elite. Official statistics, which extrapolate from surveys of the general public, are good at guessing the incomes of middling sorts. But they find it harder to get an accurate picture of those with more unusual circumstances. The very richest are particularly elusive. As well as being frustrating for nosy parkers, this makes it harder to estimate inequality, which depends on an accurate understanding of the full extent of their loot.

In a paper published on June 17th, Mike Brewer and Claudia Samano-Robles of Essex University paint an unusually detailed portrait of Britain’s very highest earners. Using data from the tax office up until 2015-16, they focus on the incomes of not just the top 1%—who earned a trifling £129,000 ($164,000) or more in that year—but the top 0.01%. The 5,000 or so individuals in that club each made at least £2.2m.

Who are they? Nearly all live in England, the majority in London. Scotland has about 200 of them, and Wales and Northern Ireland perhaps 50 between them. Only about one in ten is a woman; one in 20 is a millennial (roughly defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996). Financial services, by far the biggest category, employ more than a third of them. Yet roughly 15% of Britain’s super-high earners do not appear to work at all. In 2015 40% of the income of the top 0.01% was “unearned”, meaning that it came from the returns to financial investments and the like.

The very rich have been getting a lot richer. Since 1995 the share of overall income accruing to the top 0.01% has roughly tripled (see chart). They had a turbulent time during the financial crisis of 2008-09, when many bankers were sacked and the value of financial investments plummeted. Yet they quickly bounced back. By 2015-16 the share of income accruing to the top 0.01% was at its second-highest level in decades. It is likely to have risen still further since then.