Current Federal Debt and Deficit
Every month, the U.S. Treasury releases data on the federal budget, including the current deficit or surplus. The following contains budget data for August 2025, the eleventh month of fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Current Federal Deficit
$345B
Federal Budget Deficit for August 2025
$380B
Federal Budget Deficit for August 2024
The federal government reported a deficit of $345 billion in August 2025, a decrease of $35 billion from the $380 billion deficit recorded in August 2024. However, September 1 fell on a weekend in 2024 and 2025, causing certain payments to be shifted into the respective previous months. That accounting quirk inflated the reported August deficit in both years. Adjusting for those timing shifts, the August 2025 deficit would have been $43 billion less than the same month in the previous year.
Spending in August 2025 was $2 billion more than in August last year, though adjusting for the timing shifts, outlays were down $6 billion compared to the same month in 2024. Categories that increased significantly were $13 billion in outlays for net interest costs compared to last August, and $9 billion more in outlays related to Social Security. Offsetting those and other increases was a $31 billion decrease in outlays by the Department of Education. Receipts were up by $38 billion in August 2025 compared to the previous year: customs duties collections rose by $22 billion, largely due to the increase in tariffs, and individual income and payroll taxes increased by $20 billion, while corporate income taxes fell by $6 billion.
Cumulative Federal Deficit
$2T
Cumulative FY25 Deficit
$1.9T
Cumulative FY24 Deficit (through August 2024)
Through the first eleven months of the fiscal year, the cumulative deficit was $76 billion above last year’s level. 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. In addition to that effect, August in 2024 and 2025 was impacted by September 1 falling on a weekend in both years. Without those effects, the deficit for FY25 through the end of August would have been $5 billion less than last year’s adjusted total.
For the first eleven months of FY25, total outlays were $6.7 trillion, $376 billion higher than the same period in the previous year. Adjusting for the timing shifts, spending was $295 billion above the same period last year. That increase was driven mainly by three categories: Social Security spending was up by $111 billion, stemming from cost-of-living adjustments and some retroactive payments; net interest rose by $90 billion; and Medicare outlays increased by $64 billion (adjusted for timing shifts). Partially offsetting those and other increases was a $110 billion decrease by the Department of Education related to the July 2024 loan estimation adjustment and a $63 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 eleven months of FY25 were $300 billion above collections from a year ago, driven by a $182 billion increase in individual income 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), the difference in revenues in the first eleven months of 2025 relative to the prior year would have been larger. In addition, customs duties were higher in 2025 by $95 billion, mostly because of higher tariffs, and payroll taxes were up by $47 billion.
National Debt
$29.9T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of August 2025
$28.1T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of August 2024
The United States is nearing the end of Fiscal Year 2025, a year that is currently on track to produce the largest deficit the nation has ever seen, outside of the COVID-19 pandemic years, while enshrining a piece of legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that is projected to ensure future deficits are even larger. The federal debt is approaching its post-World War II high as a percentage of gross domestic product and is on track to rise rapidly. The nation’s increasingly unsustainable outlook argues for bipartisan solutions that will “do no fiscal harm.”