New data from the Federal Reserve shows that the top 1 percent of wealthy individuals in the U.S. now have more wealth than the entire middle class combined.

As of this summer, the middle 60 percent of American earners, which economists typically categorize as the middle class, now own only 26.6 percent of the national wealth, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent control 27 percent of the nation’s collective wealth. This is the first time the richest Americans have had more wealth than the middle class since the Fed began recording such data in 1989.

The past decades have seen growing accumulation of wealth for the richest Americans, coupled with steadily declining wealth for the middle class. In 1989, the top 1 percent controlled 17.2 percent of the nation’s wealth, whereas the middle 60 percent controlled 36.4 percent.

The top 1 percent is made up of 1.3 million households making more than about $500,000 a year — a small fraction of the over 120 million households in […]