Current Federal Debt and Deficit
Share this link via
Every month the U.S. Treasury releases data on the federal budget, including the current deficit or surplus. The following contains budget data for January 2025, the fourth month of fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Current Federal Deficit
$129B
Federal Budget Deficit for January 2025
$22B
Federal Budget Deficit for January 2024
The federal government ran a deficit of $129 billion in January 2025, an increase of $107 billion from the deficit of $22 billion recorded in January 2024. However, because February 1, 2025, fell on a weekend, certain payments were shifted into January, boosting payments for the month. Additionally, December absorbed payments that would have occurred on New Year’s Day, a federal holiday, reducing January outlays in 2024 and 2025. Adjusting for those timing shifts, the January 2025 deficit would have been $22 billion greater than the same month in the previous year.
Spending in January 2025 was $143 billion more than in January last year, although most of that increase is attributable to the timing shifts. Controlling for those adjustments, outlays were up by $57 billion compared to January 2024. Driving that growth in spending was a $13 billion increase in payments for interest on the national debt, a $12 billion increase in spending on national defense, a $7 billion increase in outlays for Veterans Affairs, and a $7 billion increase in Social Security spending. Receipts were up $36 billion in January 2025 compared to the year before, with income taxes up by $23 billion, payroll taxes increasing by $6 billion, and collections of corporate receipts higher by $5 billion.
Cumulative Federal Deficit
$840B
Cumulative FY25 Deficit
$532B
Cumulative FY24 Deficit (through January 2025)
However, October 1, 2023, fell on a weekend, thereby causing certain federal payments to be shifted into the previous fiscal year (FY23) and artificially reducing the deficit in FY24. Additionally, outlays for the first four months of FY25 were inflated by February 1 payments, which fell on a weekend, thereby shifting into January. Without those effects, the deficit for FY25 through the end of January would be $752 billion, $148 billion more than the corresponding total for last year.
For the first four months of FY25, total outlays were $2.4 trillion, $319 billion higher than the same period in the previous year. Adjusting for the aforementioned shifts, spending was $159 billion above the same period last year. That increase was driven mainly by three categories: net interest rose by $39 billion; spending on national defense increased by $36 billion; and Social Security spending was up by $31 billion, mainly stemming from cost-of-living adjustments. Partially offsetting those and other increases was a $68 billion decrease in outlays by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation related to the resolution of bank failures that occurred last year.
Revenues through the first four months of FY25 were $11 billion above collections from a year ago, driven by a $36 billion increase in the category of individual income and payroll taxes. Receipts were boosted last year by deferred collections of payments from taxpayers in locations that suffered natural disasters. If not for those postponed payments (about $35 billion), revenues in the first four months of 2025 would have been even greater than recorded during that period a year ago.
National Debt
$28.8T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of January 2025
$27.0T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of January 2024
Fiscal year 2025 has gotten off to a bad start in terms of growth in the deficit. The federal debt is approaching its post-World War II high as a percentage of gross domestic product and is on track to continue rising rapidly, which is unsustainable. The new Administration and Congress must take action to put the nation on a more sustainable footing.