Federal Debt increased sharply in response to the Great Recession of 2006-08, with debt rising from $9 trillion in 2007 to $15 trillion in 2011. Federal debt continues to increase about $1 trillion per year.

At the end of FY2018 federal debt was $21.46 trillion.

Viewed as percent of GDP the increase in federal debt is not so startling. But federal debt has still increased from 60 percent of GDP to over 100 percent of GDP in less than ten years, and has remained at about 100 percent of GDP since 2012.

At the end of FY2018 the federal debt was 104.7 percent of GDP.

US Federal Debt Since 1900

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

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

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.

CBO Long Term Forecast for Federal Debt

According to the latest forecast from the Congressional Budget Office, the federal public-held debt will grow from 78 percent of GDP in 2019 to 144 percent of GDP by 2049.

Take a course in government spending:

Spending | Federal Debt | Revenue
Defense | Welfare | Healthcare | Education
Debt History | Entitlements | Deficits
State Spending | State Taxes | State Debt

It’s free!

File a valid bug report and get a $5 Amazon Gift Certificate.