The national debt, year by year

From $71 million in 1790 to more than $40 trillion today: wars, depressions, booms and a pandemic, in one chart.

Total public debt outstanding at the end of each fiscal year, 1900 to today. Gold bars are 2020 and later. Source: U.S. Treasury, Historical Debt Outstanding.

The founding: $71 million

The United States started out in debt. The first figure on record, from January 1790, is about $71 million, mostly money borrowed to fight the Revolutionary War. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton had the new federal government take over the states' war debts too, betting that paying them reliably would make the country's credit trustworthy.

1835: the only time it was paid off

Under President Andrew Jackson, the government used land-sale revenue and tariffs to pay down the debt until, in 1835, the Treasury's records show just $33,733 outstanding — essentially zero. It's the only time in U.S. history the debt was paid off. It didn't last: a financial panic in 1837 sent the government back to borrowing.

Wars drive the big jumps

World War II pushed debt held by the public to about 106% of the economy's annual output in 1946 — a record that stood for decades. In the following years, the debt barely grew in dollars ($286 billion in 1960, $371 billion in 1970) while the economy boomed, so the burden shrank steadily relative to the country's income.

1980s–2000s: the first trillion, then ten

• 1982: the debt passed $1 trillion for the first time, amid tax cuts, a defense buildup and a recession.
• 1990: $3.2 trillion. 1996: $5 trillion.
• 1998–2001: four straight years of budget surpluses — the most recent ones.
• 2001–2008: recession, tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The debt reached $10 trillion in fiscal 2008, as the financial crisis hit.
• 2010: $13.6 trillion, after the recession and recovery spending.

Every trillion since $20 trillion

The milestones have come faster and faster. These are the first business days the Treasury's daily count showed each total:

The pandemic produced the steepest climb in modern history: from $23 trillion in late 2019 to $27 trillion just a year later, as the government funded relief programs while revenue fell. Pauses in the table usually line up with debt-ceiling standoffs, when borrowing was frozen and then caught up all at once — the jump from $36 trillion to $37 trillion in 2025 happened mostly in the weeks after the limit was raised that July.

Where it goes from here

At the past year's pace — about $2.4 trillion a year — the debt is now adding a trillion dollars roughly every five months. It stands at $40.4 trillion right now, and the next marker to watch is the debt ceiling of $41.1 trillion.