U.S. Government Debt

How much U.S. debt does the government hold?

$31,419,689,000,000 (~$31.4 trillion) is how much debt the U.S. government holds. This is as of the end of 2022.  The graph below shows the growth in U.S. government debt from the end of 1980 through the end of 2022.  The U.S. debt owed by the federal government was $930,210,000,000 as of the end of 1980 and grew to almost 34 times that amount by the end of 2022, reaching more than $31.4 trillion, as noted earlier.

The United States is a big country with a massive national debt. To convey the magnitude of this debt in more personal terms, we will look at debt per person. Dividing the $31.4 trillion debt by the U.S. estimated population of 334,233,854, calculates to be approximately $94,005 of debt per person at this time. This is a substantial debt burden on a per person basis. This calculation includes children and retired people, not just income earners.

The chart below shows the U.S. national government debt over time. Bend points in the graph are apparent where the growth in debt accelerated. These are apparent around the 2008/2009 financial crisis as well as early 2020 in response to the coronavirus.

Recent U.S. federal government debt by quarter

The chart below shows the cumulative debt of the U.S. Government for some of the most recent quarters. Total U.S. government debt now tops $31.4 trillion, an increase of approximately $500 billion from the prior quarter.

Note:  The import feature is only allowing one image and changes the formatting.  The rest of the article with a lot more details is at:  https://econ-intel.com/federal-government-dashboard/