America added more than 1,200 millionaires per day in 2025, but the heyday of the ‘everyday millionaire’ is already over

The “everyday millionaire” has a problem. It’s not money. It’s math. In 2025, UBS coined the term EMILLI — Everyday MILLIonaire — to describe the 401(k) maximizer, the dual-income homeowner, the diligent index-fund investor who looked up one day and realized the number on their brokerage statement had crossed seven figures. It became shorthand for a particular brand of accessible aspiration: you didn’t have to be a tech founder or a hedge fund manager. You just had to show up, stay invested, and wait. The 2026 UBS Global Wealth Report, released Tuesday, confirms that the everyday millionaire class is expanding faster than at any point in 17 years. The U.S. added 441,078 new millionaires in 2025 alone — more than 1,200 per day, accounting for nearly half the global total. The millionaire population grew in all 56 of UBS’ tracked markets simultaneously for the first time on record. And yet. The group immediately above the EMILLI tier has been compounding wealth at a rate that makes the everyday millionaire’s gains look, by comparison, like standing still. The elder siblings UBS has a name for the cohort sitting just above the EMILLI tier: the “elder siblings.” These are households with between $5 million and $100 million in net wealth—above the everyday millionaire threshold, below the billionaire stratosphere. Too rich to be relatable, not rich enough to be scandalous. Since 2000, their collective wealth has compounded at 6.1% annually in real terms. The EMILLI tier: 4%. That gap sounds modest, but run it out over 25 years and it isn’t. At 4% annually, $1 million becomes $2.7 million. At 6.1%, $5 million becomes $21.7 million. The two groups aren’t just growing at different speeds—they’re moving apart with every passing year, and the absolute distance between them grows faster as both numbers get larger. In 2025 specifically, elder sibling headcount and wealth grew at double-digit rates in severa