Elon Musk has been in the news quite a bit lately, and his venture into politics has put his net worth on a yo-yo string. However, Musk remains the world’s richest person: As of early July 2025, his net worth was $403.4 billion.
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That number is astronomically large and may be difficult to wrap your head around. Someone making around $115,000 annually, or $55 per hour, would need to work 3.5 million years to accumulate that amount of money. Here are some other salaries and how long you’d need to work with them to catch up to Musk.
Minimum Wage
In the U.S., the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. While the minimum wage can be higher throughout the country, states like Texas, Indiana and Wisconsin stick to the federal minimum. If you work a minimum wage job in one of those states, don’t owe any taxes and could save 100% of your income, you’d need to work 55.6 billion hours to become as rich as Musk. Taking into account that most people work 40 hours a week, it would take 26.7 million years of full-time work.
Washington currently pays out the highest minimum wage to employees at $16.66 per hour. While this is quite a leap from the federal minimum wage, it would still take 11.6 million years to reach Musk’s net worth.
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Salaries at Musk’s Companies
Musk owns various high-profile companies, which employ some of the brightest minds in the world. While many of his employees receive high salaries, none of them are close to reaching Musk’s net worth anytime soon.
Process Technician at SpaceX
SpaceX, which designs, makes and launches rockets, has been vocal about its mission to reach Mars. However, getting there involves a lot of coordination between different roles, such as process technicians. Process technicians monitor the industrial processes of a company to make sure they’re efficient and safe. At SpaceX, the average process technician’s salary is $67,400 per year, so to reach Musk’s level, they would need to work for about 6 million years.
Software Engineer at X
On Oct. 28, 2022, Musk completed his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion and began transforming the social media platform into X. As of 2025, a software engineer working at X in the U.S. makes $147,524 annually. This is considered an excellent salary by many, but it would still take a considerable amount of time for someone in this position to catch up to Musk: Dividing Musk’s net worth by $147,524 amounts to 2.7 million years.
CFO at Tesla
The chief financial officer oversees a business’ financial health, determining its strategies, forecasting and managing its cash flow. Because their role is so crucial to the success of the company, they typically receive high salaries. Currently, Tesla’s CFO is Vaibhav Taneja, and in 2024, he earned $139 million. What Taneja made in just a year is much more than most people will make in their lifetime. However, even Taneja would need to keep up this high salary for 2,903 years to be as wealthy as Musk.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: You’d Need To Work for 3.5 Million Years To Match Elon Musk’s Net Worth — Here’s the Math
