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What is the federal spending on Education?

In FY 2025 federal spending on education was “guesstimated” to be $87 billion.

Federal Education Spending Analysis

This page shows the current trends in federal education spending. There are also charts on education spending history. See here for a general history of education spending.

Recent Federal Education Spending

Recent Federal Education Spending

Chart S.81f: Recent Federal Education Spending

In the 2010s federal education spending amounted to about $150 billion. But in the COVID crisis federal education spending bumped up.

In 2022 federal education spending blipped to $692 billion as President Biden inserted a student loan forgiveness program into the budget, and then sank to $14 billion in 2023 when the courts disallowed the program.

In 2025 federal education spending was $87 billion.

Recent Fed. Education Spending<br>as Pct GDP

Chart S.82f: Recent Fed. Education Spending
as Pct GDP

Viewed from a GDP perspective, federal education spending was pretty steady at 0.6 to 0.7 percent of GDP during the 2010s. Federal education spending doubled in 2020 due to the COVID crisis.

In 2022 federal education spending blipped to 2.7 percent of GDP as President Biden inserted a student loan forgiveness program into the budget, and then sank to 0.1 percent GDP in 2023 when the courts disallowed the program.

In 2025 federal education spending was 0.3 percent GDP.

See also Education Spending History.

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Federal Education Spending by Level Since 1900

Federal Education spending to about 1 percent GDP in 1960 but has generally declined in the years since. Except for COVID

Education Spending since 1900 by Level

Chart S.83f: Education Spending since 1900 by Level

There was almost no federal spending on education until the 1930s, when the Feds spent about 0.3 percent of GDP on education. After World War II the feds spent up to 1 percent GDP in the late 1940s on the GI Bill, and then about 0.3 percent GDP through the 1950s.

In the late 1960s federal spending on education sharply increased to almost one percent GDP. This included Head Start (under pre-primary education) and student loans (under higher education). Under education spending not definable by level spending of about 0.5 percent GDP monies were spent on training, social services, and research.

By 1990 Head Start type programs were 0.17 percent GDP, student loans etc. were 0.19 percent GDP and miscellaneous spending was down to 0.32 percent GDP, with about half in social services. By the mid 2010s spending on pre-college was 0.2 percent GDP, colllege student loans were 0.2 percent GDP and other education spending was 0.23 percent GDP.

Then came COVID.

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Spending Data Sources

Spending data is from official government sources.

Gross Domestic Product data comes from US Bureau of Economic Analysis and measuringworth.com.

Detailed table of spending data sources here.
Medicare breakdown here; Medicaid breakdown here.

Federal spending data begins in 1792.

State and local spending data begins in 1820.

State and local spending data for individual states begins in 1957.

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Gross Federal Debt

Debt Now:  $37,889,756,572,760.44
Debt 2/2020:$23,409,959,150,243.63

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Data Sources for 2021_2029:

Sources for 2021:

GDP, GO: GDP, GO Sources
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

Sources for 2029:

GDP, GO: GDP, GO Sources
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.

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Federal Deficit, Receipts, Outlays Actuals for FY 2025

On October 16, 2025, the US Treasury reported in its Monthly Treasury Statement (and xlsx) for September that the federal deficit for FY 2025 ending September 30, 2025, was $1,775 billion. Here are the numbers, including total receipts, total outlays, and deficit compared with the numbers projected in the FY 2025 federal budget published in February 2024:

Federal Finances
FY 2025 Outcomes
Budget
billions
Outcome
billions
Receipts $5,485$5,235
Outlays$7,226$7,010
Deficit$1,781$1,775

We use the spending projections from the FY 2025 budget because the Federal government did not publish spending projections in its Budget for Fiscal Year 2026 as originally published in May 2025.

The Monthly Treasury Statement includes "Table 4: Receipts of the United States Government, September 2025 and Other Periods." This table of receipts by source is used for usgovernmentspending.com to post details of federal receipt actuals for FY 2025. usdgovernmentspending.com obtains the data for outlays and receipts from apis at fiscaldata.treasury.gov.

This MTS report on FY 2025 actuals is a problem for usgovernmentspending.com because this site uses Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction from the Budget of the United States as its basic source for federal subfunction outlays. But the Monthly Treasury Statement only includes "Table 9. Summary of Receipts by Source, and Outlays by Function of the U.S. Government, September 2025 and Other Periods". Subfunction amounts don't get reported until the FY27 budget in February 2026. Until then usgovernmentspending.com estimates actual outlays by "subfunction" for FY 2025 by factoring subfunction budgeted amounts for FY25 by the ratio between relevant actual and budgeted "function" amounts where actual outlays by subfunction cannot be gleaned from the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Final detailed FY 2025 actuals will not appear on usgovernmentspending.com until the FY 2027 federal budget is published in February 2026 with the actual outlays for FY 2025 in Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction.
State and Local Finances for 2023
On September 11, 2025 we updated the state and local spending and revenue for FY 2023 using the new Census Bureau  ...

State Spending for 2023
In March 2025 the US Census Bureau released data on state finances for FY 2023 here and  ...

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