National debt clock
The US national debt now, per person and per household, how fast it is growing and what the interest costs each day.
Official figure for 15 Oct 2026: $40,388,318,000,000 (Treasury, Debt to the Penny). The running count adds the average daily increase of the past 90 days; the real debt moves in steps as securities are issued and redeemed.
Over the past year the debt grew by $2.45 trillion, from $37.94 trillion on 15 Oct 2025. The full daily history and our projection are on the national debt data page.
What the number includes
Total public debt outstanding is everything the federal government owes: debt held by the public, including the Federal Reserve and foreign governments, plus debt owed to its own trust funds such as Social Security. Nearly all of it counts against the statutory debt limit. Economists usually prefer debt held by the public, and measure it against the size of the economy; see debt to GDP.
How the figures are calculated
The starting point is the Treasury's Debt to the Penny figure for the latest business day. The clock adds the average daily increase over the past 90 days, so it is an estimate between official updates, not a live Treasury feed. Per-person figures use the Census Bureau's monthly resident population estimate and per-household figures its annual count of households (via FRED). Interest per day is the latest quarterly rate of federal interest payments from the national accounts, divided by 365.
Sources: U.S. Treasury, Fiscal Data; U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED (POPTHM, TTLHH, A091RC1Q027SBEA). Updated twice a day.