US Agency Debt Since 1945

Agency debt (primarily debt from agencies and government-sponsored enterprises like the Federal National Mortgage Association that securitize home mortgage debt) started the immediate post World War II era at with a level of debt less than 0.5 percent of GDP and didn’t hit 1 percent of GDP till 1957.

But then agency debt began an exponential rise, with debt hitting 2 percent of GDP in 1965, blowing past 5 percent of GDP in 1973, reaching 10 percent of GDP in 1981.

Agency debt blew past 20 percent of GDP in 1988, exceeded 30 percent of GDP in 1995, and hit 40 percent of GDP in 1999, and agency debt peaked at 52 percent of GDP in 2003 at the end of the 2000-02 recession.

In the 2000s expansion agency debt declined to 46.7 percent of GDP by 2006, but then blew off in the Crash of 2008, peaking at 56.1 percent of GDP in the Great Recession year of 2009.

After the Crash of 2008 agency debt decreased rapidly to 46.6 percent of GDP by 2012 and then began a more gradual decline to 45.5 percent of GDP by 2014.

In response to the COVID crisis of 2020 agency debt increased to 48 percent of GDP in 2020.

On March 11, 2024, we updated usgovernmentspending.com with the numbers from the Public Budget Database in the Budget of the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2025. 

Here is how headline budget estimates for the upcoming FY 2024 fiscal year have changed since the release of the FY 2024 budget a year ago in Winter 2023.

You can see line item changes from budget to budget here. You can compare budget estimates with actuals here.

Account level spending estimates through FY 2029 come from the Outlays table in the Public Budget Database and were updated on usgovernmentspending.com on March 11, 2024.

Account level budget authority estimates through FY 2029 come from the Budget Authority table in the Public Budget Database and were updated on usgovernmentspending.com on March 11, 2024.