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What is the Debt?

This page shows Federal Debt.
Gross Federal Debt: That’s the gross amount of debt issued by the US Treasury. “Debt held by the public” and “debt held by federal government accounts” here are components of Gross Federal Debt.
Also, see National Debt, State Debt, Local Debt and Federal Deficit.

Debts and Deficits

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Debt Clock

Today’s Federal Debt is about $17,080,758,471,000.

The amount is the gross federal debt issued by the United States Department of the Treasury since 1790. It doesn’t include state and local debt, and it doesn’t include the so-called unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Federal Debt per person is about $52,347.

Projected and Recent US Federal Debt Numbers

	Gross Federal Debt	Debt Held by Public	Debt Held by Federal Reserve
FY 2014*	$18.2 trillion	$11.6 trillion	$1.6 trillion
FY 2013*	$17.2 trillion	$10.7 trillion	$1.6 trillion
FY 2012	$16.1 trillion	$9.6 trillion	$1.6 trillion
FY 2011	$14.8 trillion	$8.5 trillion	$1.7 trillion
FY 2010	$13.5 trillion	$8.2 trillion	$0.8 trillion
FY 2009	$11.9 trillion	$6.8 trillion	$0.8 trillion

“Gross Federal Debt” is the total debt owed by the United States federal government. It comprises “Debt Held by Public”, including foreign governments, debt held by federal government accounts such as IOUs owed to the Social Security trust fund, and “Debt held by Federal Reserve,” debt bought by the Federal Reserve System as part of the monetary base.

Debt Charts also: Spending Charts Revenue Charts Deficit Charts

Total

Federal

State

Local

Recent and Budgeted* US Debt

Debt in billions

Click chart for briefing on Federal Debt.
For numbers and more click here.

Debt in Percent GDP

Click chart for briefing on Federal Debt.
For numbers and more click here.

The two charts show above show recent and budgeted gross debt for the US federal government. On the left is a chart of the debt in current dollars. On the right is a chart of the debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

US Federal Debt Since 1900

Click chart for briefing on Federal Debt.
For numbers from 1900-2018 click here.

Federal debt began the 20th century at less than 10 percent of GDP. It jerked above 30 percent as a result of World War I and then declined in the 1920s to 16.3 percent by 1929. Federal debt started to increase after the Crash of 1929, and rose above 40 percent in the depths of the Great Depression.

Federal debt exploded during World War II to over 120 percent of GDP, and then began a decline that bottomed out at 32 percent of GDP in 1974. Federal debt almost doubled in the 1980s, reaching 60 percent of GDP in 1990 and peaking at 66 percent of GDP in 1996, before declining to 56 percent in 2001. Federal debt started increasing again in the 2000s, reaching 70 percent of GDP in 2008. Then it exploded in the aftermath of the Crash of 2008, reaching 102 percent of GDP in 2011.

Federal debt has breached 100 percent of GDP twice since 1900: during World War II and in the aftermath of the Crash of 2008.

US Federal Debt since the Founding

Click chart for briefing on Federal Debt.
For numbers from 1792-2018 click here.

The United States federal government began with a substantial debt, the cost of the Revolutionary War. Under Alexander Hamilton’s funding system the debt was paid off by 1840. Government debt has typically peaked after wars. It breached 30 percent of GDP after the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I. It breached 100 percent of GDP in World War II. Government debt also breached 100 percent of GDP in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.

Gross Federal Debt vs. Net Debt

Click chart for briefing on Federal Debt.
For numbers from 1900-2018 click here.

The US federal government differentiates between Gross Debt issued by the US Treasury and Net Debt held by the public. The numbers on Gross Debt are published by the US Treasury here.

Numbers on various categories of federal debt, including Gross Debt, debt held by federal government accounts, debt held by the public, and debt held by the Federal Reserve System, are published every year by the Office of Management and Budget in the Federal Budget in the Historical Tables as Table 7.1 — Federal Debt at the End of the Year. The table starts in 1940. You can find the latest Table 7.1 in here.

The chart above shows three categories of federal debt.

1. Monetized debt (blue), i.e., federal debt bought by the Federal Reserve System

2. Debt held by the federal government (red) e.g., as IOUs for Social Security

3. Other debt (green), i.e., debt in public hands, including foreign governments.

There’s much, much more:

Chart and tables of US government spending at usgovernmentspending.com.
Chart and tables of US government revenue at usgovernmentrevenue.com.
Chart and tables of UK government spending at ukpublicspending.co.uk.

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Gross Federal Debt

Debt: $17,080,758,471,000

Data Sources for 2008_2018:

Sources for 2008:

GDP: Measuring Worth - US GDP
Federal: Fed. Budget: Hist. Tables 3.2, 5.1, 7.1
State and Local: State and Local Gov. Finances

Sources for 2018:

GDP: Fed. Budget: Hist. Table 10.1
Federal: Fed. Budget: Hist. Tables 3.2, 5.1, 7.1
State and Local: State and Local Gov. Finances
“Guesstimated” by projecting the latest change in reported spending forward to future years

> data sources for other years
> data update schedule.

State and Local Spending for Individual States from 1957 to 1991

On June 15, 2013 usgovernmentspending.com loaded state and local spending and revenue for individual states going back to 1957.

Up to now, we have provided state and local finances from the present back to 1992 using data provided by the Census Bureau here. But the Census Bureau also has data on individual states going back to 1957 here in file Govt_Finances.zip.

There is a break in data series at 1991-92. The Census Bureau prior to 1992 has fewer line items than the post-1992 data. There is also a break at 1976-77. The Census Bureau prior to 1977 has fewer line items than the post-1977 data. Typically, the data in reports for earlier years is reported in an aggregate item that sums up the detailed items in the more recent data reports.

These breaks in data have produced "notches" in some of the data series, and we have done some "juggle-ology" to produce smoother data series, as detailed below.

One problem in the pre-1992 data is that Medicaid is not broken out of welfare. Up to now, for pre 1992 years we have estimated Medicaid expenses for all states combined based upon the assumption that the intergovernmental transfers to health care all apply to Medicaid and can be subtracted from the gross welfare expenditures to produce welfare net of Medicaid. For each state, therefore, we have broken down pre-1992 gross welfare expenditures between net welfare and Medicaid based upon the overall ratio for all states between net welfare (gross welfare less health care intergovernmental transfer) and Medicaid (health care intergovernmental transfer).

Another problem that the pre-1992 data seems to include judicial and legal system expenditures under "General Control" in the "General Government" category. Data since 1992 has separate data series for judicial and legal system expenditures and we showed it under "Protection" in the default data view. We have therefore created a new "default" view with judicial and legal system expenditures included under "General Government." The old default view -- now labeled "old" -- has the judicial and legal system expenditures included under "Protection." Typically, any links you have saved previous to June 15, 2013 will categorize data under the old default view. New links will use the new default view, unless you select the old default view.

For 1958-60 combined state-and-local data only is reported in the Census Bureau data. So we have estimated state data and local data by interpolation from 1957 and 1961.