The Money Issue
9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth
By Mona Chalabi
Data around billionaires’ true wealth is about as murky as swamp water. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to wade through it! To visualize the enormous sums held by the ultrarich, I scoured the internet for any reliable figures around Jeff Bezos’ fortune — and came up against mostly question marks and educated guesses. Bezos’ net worth is so tied up in Amazon stocks that it can swing in a single minute by millions of dollars. But here are our best calculations of his wealth from financial publications’ reporting and the scant paperwork available. Let’s dive in!
1. Deep Dive
Hard cash is only a tiny fraction of Bezos’ enormous wealth.
Private assets (e.g., Blue Origin): $9.15 billion
Publicly traded assets (e.g., Amazon stock): $147.25 billion
2. Let Them Eat Cake
Jeff Bezos has given away only 1.2 percent of his wealth so far. That’s $2.1 billion. What could we accomplish if he gave away more of his cake?
0.7% Giving every Amazon employee $1,000.
0.8% Emergency repairs to all U.S. roads and bridges.
1.9% Pre-K for every U.S. child for a year.
8.7% A year’s supply of insulin for U.S. diabetics.
10.4% Free public transportation for every New Yorker for a year.
11.4% Feeding 13.8 million food-insecure American households for a month.
3. Clocking In
Bezos has enough money for several lifetimes. But how many lifetimes would it take the average Joe to accumulate?
The average full-time Amazon employee made $37,930 in 2020. In order to accumulate as much money as Bezos ($172 billion) …
… an employee would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch (4.5 million years ago, when hominids had just started standing on two feet!).
4. Put It In Perspective
The median U.S. household net worth is $118,200. Bezos has $172,000,000,000. So … how does that compare?
The weight of a single peanut
A truckload of peanut butter* (*1,925 lbs. — nearly one ton!)
The size of a white blood cell
The length of a finback whale
Fingernail dust* (*0.000117 cm.)
The height of a piece of Toblerone
Mount Everest (if you climb it five times)
A flight from New York to Louisville, Ky.
The volume of a quiet library
The roar of a jet taking off
A flake in a snow globe
Every blade of grass on a small front lawn
A microscopic dot of Champagne (14 bubbles)
A flute of Champagne (20 million bubbles)
The diameter of a Oreo cookie
More than two times the width of the Grand Canyon
5. Bezos’ World
Bezos owns an estimated 420,000 acres of land. Here’s what he could fit into his metaphorical backyard.
Bezos’ land (420,000 acres)
Central Park (843 acres)
The Pentagon (1,100 acres)
Walt Disney World Resort (25,000 acres)
Land in the U.S. used to grow oranges (342,900 acres)
6. The Swing of Things
On any given day, the net worth of Jeff Bezos can wobble up or down. Often, the changes are enormous.
For example, on March 15, his estimated wealth was $166 billion in the morning when markets opened. By the end of the day, it was $172 billion.
7. Taking the Temperature
If wealth equaled heat, how hot would Jeff Bezos be?
Jeff Bezos $172,000,000,000
The core of the sun 27,000,000°F
Dolly Parton $350,000,000
The heat of lightning 50,000°F
Mitch McConnell $10,000,000
A pizza oven 900°F
Median U.S. household wealth: $118,200
Sweater weather 52°F
If this were to scale, it would take much, much longer—think whole minutes of scrolling—to make it down here …
8. More is More
A timeline of Bezos getting richer and richer and richer and richer and richer and richer and richer…
AUGUST 2013Bezos buys The Washington Post.
AUGUST 2013Bezos buys The Washington Post.
2013
JULY 2014 Amazon introduces its first smartphone.
JULY 2014 Amazon introduces its first smartphone.
2014
JULY 2015 First-ever Amazon Prime Day, to celebrate 20 years of Amazon.
JULY 2015 First-ever Amazon Prime Day, to celebrate 20 years of Amazon.
2015
JUNE 2017 Amazon acquires Whole Foods.
JUNE 2017 Amazon acquires Whole Foods.
2017
MARCH 2020 Pandemic.
2020
9. In the Times It Takes
Bezos adds $500* to his wealth every single second. Here’s how valuable his time is.
*calculated from Bezos’ 2010-20 wealth gain
In the time it takes to make a bagel from scratch, 4.5 hours
he could buy every person in Brooklyn and Queens a bagel.
In the time it takes for a human to gestate, 40 weeks
he could reimburse everyone in the United States who got I.V.F. in the past two and a half years.
In the time it took for me to draw the illustrations you see in front of you, 95 hours
Bezos could buy a $169 million apartment on the 96th floor of 432 Park Avenue.
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SOURCES: Bloomberg Billionaires Index, The Land Report, Amazon filings, Forbes’s America’s Top Givers 2022, Bezos’ net worth at end of business day on March 15, 2022.
Mona Chalabi is a writer and an illustrator in London. She specializes in all things data.
Additional design and development by Jacky Myint.