Paychecks vs Portfolios: How Income Changes at the Top (2022)
Working Americans live on wages; the highest earners live increasingly on investments. The handoff from paychecks to portfolios, by bracket.
Key findings
- For most Americans, income means a paycheck. In the under-$25k bracket, wages were 74.6% of adjusted gross income, and investment income (interest, dividends, capital gains) was just 2.4%.
- At the top it flips toward capital. In the $200k-and-up bracket, wages fell to 51.3% of AGI while investment income rose to 20.1%.
- Capital gains alone went from 0.4% of income in the bottom bracket to 14.8% in the top, the clearest sign of how differently high earners are paid.
- The wage share peaks in the lower-middle of the distribution and then falls steadily toward the top, from about 83% down to 51%, a handoff from paychecks to portfolios.
Not all income is earned the same way. This takes the Tax Year 2022 IRS ZIP data and, for each income bracket, splits adjusted gross income into wages and salaries versus investment income (interest, dividends, and capital gains). The contrast is stark: working Americans live on paychecks, while the highest earners draw a large and growing share of their income from assets. These are exact tabulations of tax returns.
Wages vs investment income, by bracket
| Category | Wages, share of AGI | Investment income, share of AGI |
|---|---|---|
| Under $25k | 74.6% | 2.4% |
| $25k to $50k | 82.7% | 1.5% |
| $50k to $75k | 78.9% | 2% |
| $75k to $100k | 74.8% | 2.5% |
| $100k to $200k | 73.3% | 4% |
| $200k and up | 51.3% | 20.1% |
By income bracket
| AGI bracket | Wages (% of AGI) | Investment income (% of AGI) | Capital gains (% of AGI) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $25k | 74.6% | 2.4% | 0.4% |
| $25k to $50k | 82.7% | 1.5% | 0.4% |
| $50k to $75k | 78.9% | 2.0% | 0.7% |
| $75k to $100k | 74.8% | 2.5% | 1.0% |
| $100k to $200k | 73.3% | 4.0% | 1.9% |
| $200k and up | 51.3% | 20.1% | 14.8% |
Investment income is interest (A00300) plus ordinary and qualified dividends (A00600) plus net capital gains (A01000), as a share of AGI (A00100). Shares need not sum to 100% because AGI includes other income types. Exact tabulation; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
IRS Statistics of Income (SOI): Migration and ZIP Code Data
- Vintage:
- Tax Year 2022
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
Tabulations built from individual income tax returns. The migration files count how many returns (roughly households), how many individuals, and how much adjusted gross income moved between every pair of U.S. counties and states from one year to the next. The ZIP Code file reports returns, income, and tax items by ZIP code and income bracket. It is a near-census of tax filers, enabling analysis of where people and their incomes move and how income is distributed geographically.
The IRS Statistics of Income division tabulates these files from individual income tax returns (Form 1040). Migration is inferred from the change in the mailing address between a filer’s return in one year and the next; the ZIP Code file aggregates return and income items by ZIP and by adjusted-gross-income bracket.
These are administrative tabulations covering essentially all tax returns filed, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts and totals; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect taxpayer privacy, the IRS suppresses or combines small cells (for example county flows below a threshold), and dollar amounts are reported in thousands. Aggregate rows for totals, non-migrants, and foreign flows appear alongside the detailed county and state records.
Migration records carry origin and destination state and county FIPS codes; the ZIP file carries state and ZIP code. Across the files, n1 approximates households (returns), n2 approximates population (individuals), and AGI is in thousands of dollars.
- Only tax filers are covered, so people who do not file (disproportionately the very low income and some elderly) are missing.
- Migration is based on year-to-year address changes on returns and misses moves that are not reflected in filing, as well as late or amended returns.
- Small county-to-county flows are suppressed for privacy, so detailed origin-destination pairs are incomplete at the low end.
- Dollar amounts are in thousands and reflect adjusted gross income as reported, not wealth or spending; the data lags roughly two years.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative tabulation (near-census of tax filers)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income, Tax Year 2022 (Migration Data / ZIP Code Data). Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-23.