Tracker · The debt and the dollar

US national debt today

The US national debt is $40.05tn as of 14 September 2026, which works out at $116,808 per resident. It has risen +6.9% over the past twelve months, or about $7 billion a day. This is Treasury's own Debt to the Penny figure, published every business day, not an estimate or a running counter.

242 quarters since Q1 1966

The per-person figure needs the same care. $116,808 is the debt divided by the population, and it is the number every retirement guide in this industry leads with. No individual owes it, nobody is billed for it, and the government is not a household with a mortgage. It is published here because readers arrive looking for it and because showing the arithmetic openly is more useful than either hiding it or presenting it as a personal liability.

This matters beyond the two quarters, because FRED's published debt-to-GDP ratio is built on the same series and inherits the same error. Anyone charting the debt from FRED alone has a line that dips in Q1 2020 and in Q4 2013 for no reason that happened in the world. We only found it because the splice was measured rather than assumed, which is the argument for measuring splices.

What is the US national debt right now?

$40.05tn as of 14 September 2026, which is the most recent business day Treasury has published. That figure is total public debt outstanding, the gross number, and it includes roughly a fifth that the government owes to its own trust funds.

How much is that per person?

$116,808 per resident, dividing the debt by the 342.9 million people the Bureau of Economic Analysis counted in Q3 2026. It is arithmetic rather than economics. No individual owes this and nobody will be billed for it, which is worth saying plainly because the figure is usually presented as though somebody might be.

Is the debt growing faster than the economy?

Yes, and it has over the whole record. Since Q1 1966 the debt has compounded at 8.31% a year while GDP has compounded at 6.35%. That gap is why the debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from 31% to 121% across sixty years, under both parties, through expansions and recessions alike.

What is the difference between gross debt and debt held by the public?

Gross debt includes intragovernmental holdings, mostly Social Security and federal pension trust funds holding Treasury securities. Debt held by the public excludes them and is the narrower figure most economists prefer, because the government owing itself is a different thing from the government owing a bondholder. This page uses the gross figure because it is the number every other publisher quotes, and Treasury publishes both in the same feed.

How fast is it rising?

The debt rose +6.92% over the last twelve months, which works out at about $7 billion a day. At that rate it would double in roughly 10 years, though that is arithmetic on a trailing rate rather than a forecast, and the rate has varied a great deal.

Where does this number come from?

Treasury's own Debt to the Penny feed, every business day since April 1993, with FRED's quarterly series carrying the record back to 1966. Where the two overlap they agree to the penny on 130 of 132 quarters. The 2 that differ are cases where FRED carries the wrong month, and this page uses Treasury's figure.