The US national debt

What that number actually counts

There is no single figure called “the national debt”. There are three, they differ by trillions of dollars, and which one a report is using is usually not stated. All three are on this page, and each is labelled every time it appears.

Gross debt is the $40.09 trillion headline. It is the sum of the other two, and it is the number almost every news report means by “the national debt”.

Debt held by the public — $32.41 trillion, or 80.8% of the total — is what the government has borrowed from everyone who is not the government: individuals, pension funds, banks, insurers, state and local governments, the Federal Reserve, and foreign central banks and investors. This is the money that has to be raised in markets, and it is the measure most economists reach for, because it is the part that competes with private borrowing and has to be refinanced at whatever rate the market asks.

Intragovernmental holdings — $7.68 trillion, or 19.2% — is the federal government owing money to itself. Social Security and the federal retirement funds took in more than they paid out for decades; by law, the surplus was lent to the Treasury in exchange for special-issue bonds. Those bonds are the intragovernmental debt.

The debt per person

Dividing $40.09 trillion by the 340.1 million people the Census Bureau estimated were living in the United States in 2024 gives $117,887 per resident.

The national debt by state

If the balance were simply divided by heads, this is how it would fall across the states. It is the same $117,887 per resident everywhere — what differs between the states is the total, because what differs between the states is how many people live there.

How the debt got here

This is the debt outstanding at the end of every fiscal year since 1970, from the Treasury’s own historical series. Nothing here is adjusted for inflation, because Treasury does not publish it that way and converting would mean picking a deflator and attributing our choice to them.

Debt outstanding has gone from $907.70 billion at the end of FY 1980 to $37.64 trillion at the end of FY 2025. Over the last decade it has grown at 7.6% a year — a pace that doubles the balance every 10 years if it holds, which is a conditional worth taking seriously rather than a forecast.

Debt against the size of the economy

A dollar figure spanning fifty years tells you mostly about inflation. The ratio to GDP does not, which is why it is the comparison economists actually use: it asks how large the debt is relative to the economy that has to service it.

On the latest reading, gross debt is 130.3% of 2025 GDP and debt held by the public is 105.3%. That gap of roughly 25% of GDP is the intragovernmental holdings, and it is the reason two commentators can quote wildly different debt-to-GDP figures on the same day and both be citing official numbers.

What the debt costs to carry

Interest is the part of the debt that shows up in this year’s budget. In fiscal year 2026, through 31 August 2026, Treasury reported interest expense on the public debt of $1.27 trillion — about $3.78 billion a day, or $157.7 million an hour.

The full FY 2025 figure was $1.22 trillion, though the two are not directly comparable — the current year is not over.

The two halves of the interest bill

That total is two different things added together, and Treasury adds them itself. $981.81 billion is interest on debt held outside the government — the money that actually leaves the Treasury for bondholders. The remaining $286.00 billion is interest credited to the federal trust funds on the intragovernmental debt described above, which does not leave the government at all.

The two are also on different accounting bases: the first is accrual, the second is cash. We report them separately for that reason and combine them only where Treasury does.

The rate the government is actually paying

This is the weighted average rate across everything outstanding in each class, at the end of 31 August 2026 — not the rate on new issuance. It matters because it moves slowly: most of the debt was issued at older rates and only reprices when it matures and has to be rolled over. Across all marketable debt the average stands at 3.475%.

The practical consequence is a lag. When market rates rise, the interest bill does not jump — it climbs for years afterwards, as older low-rate securities mature and are replaced at the new rate. Treasury bills, which are the shortest-dated, reprice fastest and are the line to watch for where the bill is heading.

The national debt by year, 1790 to today

The full series runs to 236 fiscal years. These are the readings worth anchoring on — the chart above carries the shape between them.

Two things stand out in that table and neither is the recent growth. The first is that it took until fiscal year 1982 to reach the first trillion dollars — a hundred and ninety-two years, two world wars and the Depression. The second is that the debt was paid off entirely once, in January 1835, under Andrew Jackson. It lasted about a year.

Why the debt grows even when spending is cut

The debt rises in any year the government spends more than it collects, which it has done in every year since 2001. Cutting the deficit slows the increase; it does not reverse it. Only a surplus does that, and a surplus requires collecting more than is spent, not merely spending less than last year.

The composition of the spending is why this is hard, and it is visible on our federal budget page: the largest line items are not discretionary programmes that can be trimmed by an appropriations vote. They are benefits paid to individuals under standing law, grants to states, and — increasingly — interest on past borrowing, which is not a policy choice at all. Interest is the one line that grows on its own, with no vote and no programme behind it.

That is the compounding problem in one sentence: borrowing to pay interest adds to the balance on which next year’s interest is calculated. Everything else on this page is a measurement. That is the mechanism.

How to read a debt figure without being misled

Ask which debt. Gross debt and debt held by the public differ by trillions. A report that does not say which it means is not being careful, and the two are quoted interchangeably constantly.

Ask which denominator. Per person, per taxpayer, per household and per worker are four different divisors producing four very different numbers from the same debt. The choice, not the debt, is usually what makes one presentation more alarming than another.

Ask which interest. Accrued interest on the public debt, net interest in the budget, and cash interest paid are three measures that differ by hundreds of billions.

Ask whether the counter is real. Treasury publishes once a business day. Every second-by-second debt clock, this one included, is extrapolating between those readings. Ours says so and shows the rate it is using; most do not.

Common questions