Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire in 2008 after founding Facebook, making him the youngest technology entrepreneur to achieve this milestone. Since then, his fortune has experienced significant fluctuations, largely due to his commitment to advancing Meta’s metaverse project. However, 2024 has proven to be an outstanding year for Zuckerberg, as both his wealth and popularity are growing rapidly.
Current fortune and annual increase. Zuckerberg has rebounded from the extensive resources spent on the metaverse. His wealth is now rising at an astronomical pace, placing him in fourth position on the Forbes billionaires list with a fortune of $201.1 billion and counting.
Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth was $127.6 billion in December 2023. According to Forbes, it has surged to $201.1 billion so far this year, an impressive increase of $73.5 billion in just over 11 months.
For Zuckerberg, time is money. As the CEO of one of the world’s largest technology companies, the value of his time is incredibly high. But just how valuable is it? Recently, Zuckerberg has amassed $73.5 billion, meaning that he adds about $2,330 to his fortune every second. In the time it takes you to read this post, he could earn around $394,000.
If Zuckerberg decided to sell everything and retire on his ranch in Hawaii, spending $1 million a day, he would exhaust his wealth in more than 550 years, although this calculation ignores the compound interest that his fortune would generate. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would need a similar amount of time to deplete his wealth, taking about 548 years.
Zuckerberg is still actively working. At 40, he’s too young to retire, so it’s interesting to see what he would be earning if he worked a standard 40-hour week.
If we consider his net worth increase in 2024 as labor income, his salary would be around $6.13 billion per month. This breaks down to approximately $282.6 million for each eight-hour workday, resulting in an hourly wage of $35.3 million.
In comparison, Zuckerberg’s earnings would surpass those of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who would’ve received an average salary of “just” around $52 million per day in 2023.
Sleep has never been so profitable. For a billionaire like Zuckerberg, even hours of rest translate into financial gain. In a 2023 interview with Forbes, he said he sleeps at least eight hours daily. During this time, he continues to accumulate wealth.
Specifically, Zuckerberg wakes up each morning with an additional $67.1 million in his bank account. In comparison, when he was resting, Bezos earned just over $26.6 million in 2023, while Gates racked up about $15.2 million.
Becoming a millionaire is no easy feat. Achieving a fortune similar to Zuckerberg’s is not only challenging but virtually impossible for the average person. If someone were to start from scratch and work 45 years with a standard 40-hour workweek, they’d need to earn $2.1 million per hour to reach Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth of $201.1 billion.
To put this into perspective, the federal minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25 per hour. This equates to around $1,276 per month or $15,312 per year. To match what Zuckerberg has earned so far in 2024, it’d take 4,800,156 minimum yearly wages. Additionally, if a person earning that wage wanted to equal Zuckerberg’s fortune, they’d need to work for 13,133,490 years.
Image | Alessio Jacona
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