The nation's wealthy already appear to be bouncing back somewhat from the recession, according to a survey released by Spectrem Group.
The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, grew 16% to 7.8 million in 2009, up from 6.7 million in 2008, according to the Spectrem report Affluent Market Insights 2010. Last year's number was still well short of the all-time high in 2007 of 9.2 million millionaire households.
In 2009, the number of ultra-high-net-worth households, those with a net worth of $5 million or more, advanced 17% to 980,000, while those with a net worth of $500,000 or more grew by 12% in 2009 to 12.7 million.
Spectrem's report is based on surveys of 3,000 affluent households conducted throughout 2009 with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, an online survey of 1,498 households with a net worth of $100,000 to $1 million fielded in July 2009, and online surveys of 1,089 households with a net worth of $1 million to $5 million and 523 households with a net worth of $5 million to $25 million conducted in November 2009. The margins of error for those surveys range from plus or minus 2.4 percentage points to plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.