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.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its Gross State Product (GSP) data for 2025 on April 9, 2026.

Usgovernmentspending.com has updated its individual state GSPs for 2025 for each state using the projected national GDP numbers from Table 10.1 in the Historical Tables for the Federal FY2027 Budget and the historical GDP data series from the BEA as a baseline.

Process:

1. Click on link.
2. Click on "Interactive Data" link
3. Click on "Interactive Tables: GDP by State" link
4. Click on "Annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by State"
5. Click on "Summary Tables for GDP, personal income, and related data."
6. Click on "SASUMMARY"
7. Area: Select "All Areas"
8. Statistic: Select "Real GDP..." and "Gross domestic product (GDP)"
9. Click on Next Step button
10. Time Period: Select "All Years"
11. Click on Next Step button
12. Click on Download button
13. Select CSV