US Agency Debt Since 1945

Agency debt (primarily debt from agencies and government-sponsored enterprises like the Federal National Mortgage Association that securitize home mortgage debt) started the immediate post World War II era at with a level of debt less than 0.5 percent of GDP and didn’t hit 1 percent of GDP till 1957.

But then agency debt began an exponential rise, with debt hitting 2 percent of GDP in 1965, blowing past 5 percent of GDP in 1973, reaching 10 percent of GDP in 1981.

Agency debt blew past 20 percent of GDP in 1988, exceeded 30 percent of GDP in 1995, and hit 40 percent of GDP in 1999, and agency debt peaked at 52 percent of GDP in 2003 at the end of the 2000-02 recession.

In the 2000s expansion agency debt declined to 46.7 percent of GDP by 2006, but then blew off in the Crash of 2008, peaking at 56.1 percent of GDP in the Great Recession year of 2009.

After the Crash of 2008 agency debt decreased rapidly to 46.6 percent of GDP by 2012 and then began a more gradual decline to 45.5 percent of GDP by 2014.

In response to the COVID crisis of 2020 agency debt increased to 48 percent of GDP in 2020.

On September 11, 2025 we updated the state and local spending and revenue for FY 2023 using the new Census Bureau State and Local Government Finances summaries for FY 2023 released on July 31, 2025.  (See also Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances). The release includes state and local spending for the United States as a whole and the 50 individual states and the District of Columbia.

State and local spending and revenue for FY2023 are now actual historical spending as reported by the Census Bureau. In addition, the Census Bureau published updated tables for 2021 and 2022.

We have updated the "guesstimated" state and local finances for FY2024-30 as indicated in our "guesstimate" blog entries.

We have also updated data for individual local government units with data for 2023. 

Beginning in 2022 the Census Bureau has changed the value for Line 56 Direct Expenditure and Line 7 General Revenue from own sources, as follows:

We have decided to end our publication of non-insurance trust cash and security holdings.

However, to keep the time series at usgovernmentspending.com consistent, we have decided to add insurance-trust values back into Line 56 and Line 7 values.