Salary of the US President: What is Joe Biden’s net worth?
The President of the United States receives a salary of $400,000 per year. However, as we’ll see in a moment, this hasn’t always been the case. Considering the office’s responsibilities, the salary may seem low to some. However, the position’s incredible ability to generate wealth should not be overlooked.
In 2007, it was estimated that President Obama had a net worth of approximately $4.6 million when he took office. Business Insider claims that speaking engagements, board appointments, and other projects had increased that amount to over $70 million by 2022. The same thing happened to President Bill Clinton’s wealth. The Washington Post put Clinton’s net worth at around $700,000 when he started his first term. That amount is now approximately $150 million, more than three decades later.
Between George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant, the first eighteen presidents, each earned $25,000 per year.
According to the inflation calculator in 2013 dollars, this salary’s real value decreased from $840,365 in 1788 to $623,270 in 1873, when Congress enacted the first commander-in-chief raise in history.
Who was the very first president to receive a pay raise?
In 1873, Ulysses S. Grant became the first president to receive a salary increase while in office, rising to $50,000 per year. This income was earned by presidents from Ulysses S. Grant to Theodore Roosevelt, and between 1873 and 1909, its value increased from $1.2 million to $1.6 million in modern dollars.
The president’s salary goes up for the second time. In 1909, Congress approved a salary of $75,000 for the president. This annual salary was paid to Presidents William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. When President Truman was elected in 1948, the value of the salary decreased from $1.6 million to $931,000.
Harry Truman became the second president to receive a salary increase while in office when Congress increased the annual salary to $100,000 in 1949. Additionally, Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson would each receive $100,000, a sum that had decreased from $1.2 million to $859,600 by the time Johnson took office.
