Sovereign debt / USA
United States
Latest government debt 120.8% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). 1 sovereign-debt crisis episode on record, in 1933.
Official risk classification
United States has been unclassified throughout the record (1999 to present). High-income OECD and high-income euro-area countries are exempt from the CRC minimum-premium framework: export-credit pricing for these markets follows market terms, so the OECD does not assign them a numeric risk category. This is an exemption by design, not missing data.
The CRC scores the likelihood a country services its external debt on an eight-step scale, from 0 to 7, and sets the minimum premiums the OECD Arrangement participants charge on officially supported export credit. Categories 1 to 7 are the risk ladder (1 lowest, 7 highest). Category 0, and the blank status the OECD has used for these countries since 2013, mark high-income OECD and high-income euro-area economies that are exempt because their credit is priced on market terms. An exempt status is unclassified by design, not a data gap and not a zero-risk rating.
Source: OECD, Country Risk Classifications of the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits OECD CRC, free reuse with attribution. Category is an ordinal 0-7 risk step, not a probability; 0 and blank denote exemption. Methodology
Debt to GDP trajectory
Debt to GDP by perimeter, observed years only (no IMF forecast years). Central-government debt is mechanically below general government (it excludes state, local and social-security debt). Shaded bands are sovereign-debt crisis years.
Source: IMF Global Debt Database (Mbaye, Moreno-Badia & Chae, IMF WP/18/111) | IMF World Economic Outlook Debt is % of GDP; crisis-year shading from the sovereign-debt chronologies. Methodology
Debt profile
- General government (IMF GDD)
- 120.8% (2024)
- Central government (IMF GDD)
- 102.7% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 122.3% (2024)
- Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
- 143.1% (2024)
- Peak debt
- 132.0% (2020)
- Sovereign crises
- 1
- Last crisis
- 1933
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- +40.1
Quarterly debt (World Bank QPSD)
A higher-frequency companion to the annual IMF figures above: general government gross debt, quarter by quarter, from the World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt database.
QPSD and the annual IMF WEO/GDD series are not the same measure: coverage of the public sector and the valuation of instruments (nominal, face or market value) can differ, so a quarterly QPSD reading and an annual IMF reading for the same period need not match. Read the quarterly line as within-year timing, not as a re-statement of the annual ratio.
Source: World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt (QPSD) World Bank QPSD, CC BY 4.0. General government gross debt, percent of GDP; 1995Q1 to 2025Q4. Methodology
United States debt in detail
The debt-to-GDP series above is the cross-country comparable. These panels are US-specific and come from the Treasury’s own daily and monthly publications: the exact debt outstanding, what it costs to service, and who abroad owns it, now and over the full monthly record.
Total public debt outstanding
Daily since Apr 1, 1993, when it was $4.23T: a 9.4x rise. Figures are exact dollars, displayed to the nearest $0.01 trillion.
Average interest rate on marketable debt
Weighted average coupon across all marketable Treasury securities. -3.21 pp since 2001-01 (6.620%).
Top foreign holders of Treasury securities
Largest foreign holders in May 1, 2026, from the Treasury International Capital (TIC) data. Amounts are US dollars in billions. All foreign holders together held $9,371.1 bn of which $3,848.0 bn was held by foreign official institutions (central banks and sovereign funds).
| # | Holder | Holdings ($ bn) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | 1,143.1 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 948.6 |
| 3 | China, Mainland | 659.3 |
| 4 | Belgium | 472.0 |
| 5 | Cayman Islands | 471.3 |
| 6 | Luxembourg | 436.0 |
| 7 | Canada | 435.8 |
| 8 | France | 393.1 |
| 9 | Ireland | 357.2 |
| 10 | Taiwan | 306.0 |
Foreign holders over time
The same TIC table, as a monthly series back to 2000-03. All foreign holders together held $9,371.1 bn in 2026-05 (peak: $9,489.4 bn in 2026-02). The big rotation is China, Mainland: from a peak of $1,316.7 bn in 2013-11 to $659.3 bn in 2026-05, a 50% decline, leaving both Japan ($1,143.1 bn) and the United Kingdom ($948.6 bn) above China.
Levels only, deliberately: TIC holdings cover marketable Treasuries, and this estate carries no monthly marketable-debt outstanding series, so no “foreign share of the debt” ratio is computed here (Debt to the Penny above includes intragovernmental and non-marketable debt, which would mix concepts). Two caveats from the Treasury’s own table notes: holdings are collected from US-based custodians, so securities held in overseas custody accounts may not be attributed to the actual owner (which inflates custodial centers such as the UK, Belgium and the Cayman Islands); and the UK line is the published “United Kingdom 2/” series (including the Channel Islands and Isle of Man) through 2011, joined to the plain United Kingdom series from 2012. How this debt is absorbed at issue is on the Treasury auctions page.
Source: U.S. Treasury, Fiscal Data: Debt to the Penny and Average Interest Rates on U.S. Treasury Securities | U.S. Treasury, Treasury International Capital (TIC): Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities U.S. Treasury, public domain (17 U.S.C. section 105). Debt is exact dollars shown as $T; interest rate is percent; TIC holdings are USD billions. Retrieved Jul 18, 2026. Methodology
External debt (World Bank IDS)
No IDS external-debt series for United States. The World Bank’s International Debt Statistics covers low- and middle-income borrowing economies only, so high-income economies are absent by construction.
Debt in default (BoC-BoE CRAG)
No external debt in default recorded for United States in the BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database (1960 onward).
Sovereign-debt crisis history
Each episode with the government debt-to-GDP ratio in its start year, where a reading exists. Episode dates use the same merge as the crisis atlas (consecutive crisis years bridged across gaps of up to two years).
- 1933Pre-1950Debt at start: 40.1% (General govt (GMD historical))episode →
Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 (Müller, Xu, Lehbib & Chen 2025) | Reinhart-Rogoff via HBS BFFS | Laeven & Valencia (2020) Methodology
Restructuring history and creditor losses
No sovereign-debt restructuring on record for United States in the Cruces–Trebesch haircut database (1815 to present).
Reading this profile
- Debt levels mix perimeters. The headline and debt-at-start figures fall back through IMF general government, then central government, then WEO gross debt, then (before 1950) the GMD historical series. Central-government readings understate the general-government ratio.
- Crisis flags end in 2016 (Reinhart-Rogoff) and 2017 (GMD, Laeven-Valencia), while debt runs to 2024. “Years since last crisis” and the absence of recent crises reflect where the sources stop, not a guarantee of calm.
- Debt level is a weak predictor of default on its own; see the methodology for the debt-intolerance evidence and the full construction.