US Government Debt (% of GDP)
Total federal government debt, compared with the size of the economy.
122.6%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full US economy26 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Government Debt (% of GDP)
Q1 1970 to Q1 2026
Source: FRED series GFDEGDQ188S · total public debt, % of GDP, seasonally adjusted (Treasury/OMB).
US Government Debt (% of GDP) in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In the US, the government debt rose by 2.0pp over the year to Q1 2026, from 120.5% in Q1 2025.
It is the highest reading since Q1 2021.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 115.6% in Q1 2023 to 124.0% in Q1 2021.
Its average since Q1 1970 is 66.1%, and the latest reading is above that.
The US is 5th of 62 countries in our Government Debt to GDP by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- FRED
- Series
- GFDEGDQ188S
- Frequency
- Quarterly
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Seasonally adjusted
- Latest observation
- Q1 2026
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
Data refreshed 2026-10-28. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
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