The national debt split evenly across every person living in the United States. This is our headline number.
Updated daily from U.S. Treasury and U.S. Census data. Last refreshed May 29, 2026.
It's plain division. Take everything the federal government owes — every Treasury bond, bill, and note — and split it evenly across the people it represents.
The result isn't a bill you'll receive or a balance you personally carry. It's a yardstick: a way to feel the size of a 13-digit number, and to see whether it's growing faster than the country behind it.
Change the denominator and the number changes. Divide by federal tax returns and you get debt per taxpayer; divide by adults 18 and over and you get debt per voting-age citizen — both still pending a methodology review before we publish them. See the methodology & FAQ for full source definitions and the freshness policy.
Each verified Treasury update adds a point to the record. The line below is built only from values we've published — it lengthens as the tracker runs.
Source: published Debt Per Person daily values (Treasury debt ÷ Census population). Historical trend depth grows over time; longer-range context will fill in as the record accumulates.
Every Friday: the latest debt-per-person figure, what moved it, and three sourced fiscal reads in plain English.
Every figure traces back to an official, public source. We show our math, our vintages, and the exact moment we last calculated.
DebtPerPerson is an independent, nonpartisan informational project. The figures here are estimates for general education and are not financial, tax, investment, legal, or political advice. Debt per taxpayer and debt per voting-age citizen are withheld until their denominator methodology is finalized and approved.