How many American households earn over $1 million annually?

1. What the question actually asks — income versus wealth

The query asks about annual household income above $1 million, which is distinct from being a “millionaire” by net worth; the sources emphasize this distinction: Spectrem and other wealth studies report millions of households with net worth over $1 million excluding primary residence, but those refer to accumulated assets, not yearly paycheck or business income ^{[1] [3] [4]}. Reporting that conflates the two categories — income and net worth — can mislead readers into believing far more households “earn” $1 million each year than actually do, a point the World Economic Forum highlights when comparing perceptions to reality ^[1].

2. What the data say about the rarity of $1M+ incomes

Analysts and survey summaries place the share of households with annual incomes above $1 million well below 0.5 percent of all U.S. households, a finding the World Economic Forum summarizes when contrasting public perception with statistical reality ^[1]. TheWorldData’s breakdown of the top 1% shows the threshold to enter that group in 2025 was roughly $731,492 in annual income, and that under 1.5 million households reach the top‑1% level — a useful anchor that implies the even smaller subset earning $1 million-plus is a fraction of that top 1% ^[2]. The U.S. Census publishes detailed household income tables but does not provide a simple published headcount in the cited extract for the $1 million income cut‑off in the supplied snippets, so direct Census confirmation is not available in these sources ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Translating percentages into household counts (and limits of that math)

Using the commonly cited base of roughly 130 million U.S. households (the figure used in Spectrem/WEF commentary), a share “less than 0.5%” corresponds to fewer than about 650,000 households — a back‑of‑the‑envelope upper bound consistent with the qualitative characterizations in the available reporting but not a formal count provided by the Census in these snippets ^[1]. That arithmetic is an approximation: the precise number depends on which survey and year are used, how income is defined (pre‑tax vs. after‑tax, household vs. family), and whether very high‑variance income sources like realized capital gains are captured fully ^{[5] [6]}.

4. Why headline “millionaire” numbers are much larger and easily misread

Asset‑based measures show many more U.S. households with a million dollars or more in net worth — Spectrem’s and other wealth tallies cite millions of households with $1 million+ in assets, and DQYDJ and Statista provide alternative millionaire household estimates — but those are wealth counts, not annual income tallies, and thus cannot be substituted for the question about earning $1 million in a year ^{[1] [3] [4]}. Popular articles and social posts frequently conflate these metrics, intentionally or not, because “millionaire” headlines attract attention; readers should be wary of that implicit agenda in consumer finance coverage ^[7].

5. Bottom line and reporting gaps

The best summary consistent with the supplied sources: households reporting more than $1 million in annual income are a tiny minority — well under 0.5% of U.S. households, which implies an upper‑bound estimate in the low hundreds of thousands given a household base near 130 million — but no single cited table in these excerpts gives a final, authoritative count for the $1 million income threshold, and precise counts require consulting the detailed CPS/ACS microdata or IRS Statistics of Income tables not excerpted here ^{[1] [2] [5]}.