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U.S. federal debt

about $37.6 trillion

2025-09-30 · claim US-FEDERAL-2025 · edition 2026-09-14-v1

Exact value
37,600,000,000,000 USD
Perimeter

Federal gross debt, including holdings within the government and debt held by the public. Its perimeter differs from the European general-government comparisons.

What this measures
U.S. federal gross debt at September 30, 2025 — debt held by the public plus intragovernmental holdings.
What it does not measure
Consolidated general-government debt on the European perimeter, a current counter, or a ranking row.
As published
37.6 USD trillions (normalized ×1000000000000 to reach the exact value above)
Caveat
About $37.6 trillion of total federal debt outstanding at September 30, 2025 — debt held by the public plus intragovernmental holdings. That is GAO's own construction and GAO's own wording; "gross debt" appeared in an earlier version of this record and is not a term the cited audit uses. A visibly different borrower perimeter from the European consolidated general-government rows, not an identical-perimeter ranking row, and not a live counter for today.
Display step
100,000,000,000 — the precision this figure is shown at
Review status
Recorded against the publisher's own cited location. The source's consolidation status below says whether that page was retrieved during consolidation or an earlier review was preserved.

Publisher

  • FY2025 and FY2024 Schedules of Federal Debt audit

    GAO. GAO-26-107908; January 20, 2026; Fast Facts: $37.6tn debt at September 30, 2025 and $1.2tn FY2025 interest.

    Fiscal year 2025; report issued January 20, 2026. Status as of 2026-09-13.

    Retrieved again from the publisher on that date. Federal gross debt counts debt held by the public and debt the government owes to its own accounts, so it is not consolidated general-government debt. The interest figure is a year's payments, not an addition to the debt.

Cite this figure

U.S. federal debt, about $37.6 trillion, 2025-09-30. GAO, FY2025 and FY2024 Schedules of Federal Debt audit, status as of 2026-09-13. Planet IOU, edition 2026-09-14-v1, https://planetiou.jonathanrreed.com/sources/US-FEDERAL-2025/

This claim is a dated observation, not a live figure. It is never updated in place: a newer reading is a new edition with its own page. See methodology for how amounts are normalized and corrections for anything that has changed.