Number of U.S. millionaires rebounds with stock market

The stock market has roared back to record-high territory, and the number of U.S. millionaires is evidently not far behind. As The Washington Post reports, the number of U.S. households worth $1 million or more—excluding the value of their homes—surged to nearly 9 million in 2012. That is just below its pre-recession peak of 9.2 million, according to the report by the Spectrem Group, a Chicago area financial consultant firm. The economic downturn caused the stock market to tumble by more than half between October 2007 and March 2009, when the Dow Jones industrial average hit a low of 6443. The fall decimated the nation’s ranks of millionaires, which slipped to 6.8 million in 2008 after hitting its peak the previous year, Spectrem reports. But stock prices have bounced back. The Dow closed Thursday at a record high of 14,539, continuing a long surge that has also lifted hundreds of thousands of American families above the millionaire mark. The firm said the stock-market rally lifted the number of households with $500,000 or more in net worth to 14.3 million in 2012, up half a million from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the number of what Spectrem calls high-net-worth individuals—those whose wealth is between $5 million and $25 million—reached 1.14 million at the end of 2012, up from 1.078 million a year earlier. Meanwhile, more than 12 million Americans are unemployed, incomes are flat, and more than 40% of the jobless have been out of work for six months or more. More details, as well as a number of infographics, can be found here.