A partial answer to your question is the “middleman minority” phenomena. Note that the below answer pertains primarily to Europe and encompasses more than a millennia of history:

Antisemitism meant that Jews in most societies were barred, in either a de-facto or de jure manner, from owning capital such as farms & factories. Such assets were a primary means for becoming wealthy and influential. Being locked out of these opportunities due to discrimination was compounded by the fact that most Jews were poor, and there was little upward mobility for lower-income people in the centuries in question. The poor tended to remain poor, particularly if they were Jewish.

Over time, therefore, an increasing proportion of Jews began gravitating toward “transactional” professions such as money lending, trade, accounting, etc. This is because these career choices did not require property ownership, political connections, or high start-up costs. Jews became prominent in banking in particular due in part to the Catholic Church’s historical prohibition on engaging in usury (lending money at interest.)

While this improved the material well-being of many European Jews, it also had the unfortunate effect of worsening antisemitism:

Because middlemen generally don’t produce physical goods like farmers, manufacturers, or other professionals, Jewish success in transactional fields yielded fodder for accusations that Jews were unfairly exploiting Gentiles’ hard work. The import/expert agent or moneylender provides an invaluable service, but his contribution to the economy and the value for which he is compensated is less self-evident than, say, a shipbuilder. Essentially, they were seen as profiting without earning it.

Middleman fields can be highly lucrative, especially relative to the economic fortunes of many producers in these societies. The average farmer in medieval or early modern Europe, for example, was not wealthy at all. Consider the perspective of a farmer or craftsman who barely makes enough to survive, yet sees Jewish middlemen reaping hefty profits despite seemingly not producing anything of value. This is a grossly inaccurate perception, of course, but it’s not hard to recognize its implications.

This creation of Jewish wealth via middleman trades also increased the public visibility and social influence of Jews by producing prominent bankers, lawyers, merchants, etc. This completed the circle of the “sinister Jewish puppet master” perception. As if being “Christ-killing” religious outsiders in a deeply Christian continent wasn’t bad enough, they were now also seen as a parasitic class that grew wealthy on Christians’ honest labor. The fact that Jewish middlemen provided invaluable economic services to their non-Jewish neighbors, and that the majority of Jews remained impoverished and excluded from wider society, went largely unrecognized.

Jews are not the only Middleman Minorities. Probably the closest of many other examples are the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians were also religious outsiders (Christians within a predominantly Muslim sphere) and, like their European Jewish analogues, also suffered a terrible genocide.