How much did federal agencies obligate in FY2025?

Agencies reported $5,300,522,529,554 in obligations across 73 top-tier agencies, as of September 23, 2026. The fiscal year is not complete and agencies revise their submissions.

Is an obligation the same as money spent?

No. An obligation is a binding commitment to pay. Money actually paid out is an outlay, which USAspending reports separately.

Why do the state figures not add up to the total?

Work performed abroad, or with no reported place of performance, has no state. State figures cover $5.2 trillion of the $5.3 trillion total.

Federal spending, FY2025

Federal agencies reported $5.3 trillion in obligations for fiscal year 2025, across 73 top-tier agencies.

Fiscal year 2025

$5.3 trillion
Total obligations, FY2025: $5,300,522,529,554; All award types. Obligations recorded, not money spent. FY2026 so far, 10 of 12 reporting periods: $4.9 trillion.; $778.0 billion
Contracts: $778,045,402,607; Procurement awards. FY2026 so far, 10 of 12 reporting periods: $670.7 billion.; $1.2 trillion
Grants: $1,244,955,168,318; Grant and cooperative agreement awards. FY2026 so far, 10 of 12 reporting periods: $1.2 trillion.; $3.3 trillion
Direct payments: $3,251,230,712,307; Benefits paid to individuals, including Social Security. FY2026 so far, 10 of 12 reporting periods: $3.0 trillion.; $207.4 million
Loans: $207,403,034; Face value of loans and loan guarantees. Not money paid out. FY2026 so far, 10 of 12 reporting periods: -$4.9 billion, net: more was de-obligated — canceled or reduced — than newly obligated.; $8.7 billion
Insurance: $8,724,866,817; Face value of federal insurance. Reported very differently before FY2014. FY2026 so far, 10 of 12 reporting periods: $5.8 billion.

Fiscal year 2025 ran from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, and is complete. Agencies revise what they submit, so these figures still change; they were taken from USAspending on September 23, 2026. FY2026 is still running and its figures hold 10 of its 12 reporting periods, so it is reported above as a running total rather than compared with a whole year.

What stands out

Eight findings. Every figure below comes from a published government dataset, named under Sources at the foot of this page.

Federal obligations appear to fall 29.8% between FY2013 and FY2014. They did not. the reclassification →
Insurance — the face value of federal insurance — was $1.4 trillion in FY2013 and $8.7 billion in FY2014. Take it out and the same two years rise 6.6%. The change is in what was reported.
Most federal money is not a contract: direct payments are 61.3% of obligations and contracts are 14.7%. how federal money is paid →
The instruments are not equivalent quantities, and a single figure for federal spending averages three things that behave differently through the year.
The government publishes two figures for what it spent in FY2025, $1.7 trillion apart. committed against paid →
Award obligations reported to USAspending were $5.3 trillion; Treasury's outlays for the same fiscal year were $7.0 trillion. They measure different moments and different universes, and neither is wrong.
Department of Health and Human Services alone accounts for 38.1% of federal obligations this year. Health and Human Services →
$2.0 trillion of the $5.3 trillion reported across 73 top-tier agencies.
The state with the most federal obligations per resident has 91.1% of them from one agency. North Dakota →
North Dakota records $123,129 per resident, and $89.7 billion of its $98.4 billion comes from Department of Health and Human Services. Place of performance is where the recipient said the work happens, which for a national program is where its administrator sits rather than where the money reaches people.
Interest owed to investors has run to $736.9 billion this fiscal year. the debt, to August 31 →
Accrued interest on public issues, which is what the debt cost in the period rather than what was paid out in it.
2,289,472 federal civilian employees — and that is not all of them. federal employment, March 2025 →
That is OPM's FedScope file for March 2025. The Office of Personnel Management excludes the intelligence community and some Department of Defense positions, so the workforce is larger than the published figure and nobody publishes by how much. OPM's newer Federal Workforce Data counts 2,024,832 in August 2026, on the federal salaries hub →
Hennepin County records more federal obligations than any other county, and 98.7% of it is direct payments. counties by federal awards →
Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the same table with 10,014,009 residents, records $80.1 billion and ranks 7. Direct payments are recorded against a place that need not be where the money landed, so this ranks where payments are booked. Why they are booked there, the data does not say.

What changed in this release

This release was retrieved on September 23, 2026, and the one before it on September 19, 2026.

Still $5.3 trillion obligated by federal agencies in FY2025.

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Nineteen fiscal years

Federal obligations excluding insurance rose from $2.0 trillion in FY2008 to $5.3 trillion in FY2025

Two lines, because one would mislead. The upper line is every award type. The lower one takes out insurance — award type 09, which is face value like a loan guarantee rather than money paid — and is comparable across the whole period.

The publisher reported $1.4 trillion of insurance in FY2013 and $8.7 billion in FY2014, so the upper line falls by about a third at that point. That is a change in what is reported, not a fall in federal spending: the lower line does not fall.

The dashed line marks the change in insurance reporting after FY2013. A step in the upper line there is a change in what the publisher counts, not in what the government spent.

FY2026 is still open and is not drawn. A part year plotted beside complete ones reads as a fall, and the figure in the title above is the last complete year rather than the months recorded so far.

Source: USAspending

About this chart

The figures

Federal obligations excluding insurance rose from $2.0 trillion in FY2008 to $5.3 trillion in FY2025. Two lines, because one would mislead. The upper line is every award type. The lower one takes out insurance — award type 09, which is face value like a loan guarantee rather than money paid — and is comparable across the whole period.
Fiscal year	All award types	Excluding insurance	Agencies reporting
2008	$2,044,905,796,392	$2,038,588,482,581	64
2009	$2,938,454,289,850	$2,494,429,356,076	65
2010	$2,491,533,306,815	$2,253,707,627,096	67
2011	$3,313,616,675,627	$2,040,235,547,076	65
2012	$3,857,275,766,571	$2,585,192,008,289	68
2013	$3,968,139,204,133	$2,604,958,223,920	69
2014	$2,786,602,797,374	$2,777,858,330,200	68
2015	$2,940,707,974,604	$2,934,145,323,993	68
2016	$3,141,047,739,153	$3,134,338,021,695	70
2017	$3,250,615,927,167	$3,239,065,306,870	71
2018	$3,376,905,677,422	$3,360,235,948,133	72
2019	$3,548,609,472,120	$3,540,150,254,451	72
2020	$4,995,472,568,090	$4,984,275,059,578	73
2021	$5,298,952,103,488	$5,285,866,226,011	73
2022	$4,598,655,554,408	$4,571,369,889,010	73
2023	$4,817,465,962,340	$4,798,100,537,568	73
2024	$4,931,390,990,918	$4,924,228,322,932	73
2025	$5,300,522,529,554	$5,291,797,662,737	73

Embed this chart

Paste this where you want the chart. The picture carries its title, source and credit, under the site’s license.

<figure style="margin:0;max-width:960px">
  <img src="https://americanfactbook.org/embed/chart/spending-national-trend.svg" alt="Federal obligations excluding insurance rose from $2.0 trillion in FY2008 to $5.3 trillion in FY2025" style="width:100%;height:auto" loading="lazy">
  <figcaption style="font:13px/1.4 system-ui,sans-serif">Chart: <a href="https://americanfactbook.org/spending">Federal obligations excluding insurance rose from $2.0 trillion in FY2008 to $5.3 trillion in FY2025</a>, American Factbook, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></figcaption>
</figure>

FY2026 is not over, so its column is a part-year against whole years. The number of agencies reporting rose from 64 in FY2008 to 73 in FY2026; the 15 that were not there at the start account for $62,070,926 of FY2026’s $4.9 trillion, so the rise across the series is not a rise in who reported.

Largest agencies

All 73 agencies

Department of Health and Human Services obligated $2.0 trillion in 2025, the largest of any agency

The ten agencies with the largest obligations, fiscal year 2025.

Source: USAspending

About this chart

The figures

Department of Health and Human Services obligated $2.0 trillion in 2025, the largest of any agency. The ten agencies with the largest obligations, fiscal year 2025.
Agency	Obligated
Department of Health and Human Services	$2,018,683,658,814
Social Security Administration	$1,634,722,350,666
Department of Defense	$501,646,895,053
Department of Veterans Affairs	$287,879,793,290
Department of Agriculture	$186,347,455,482
Department of Transportation	$134,027,504,546
Department of Education	$96,020,195,016
Department of Energy	$79,591,375,789
Department of Housing and Urban Development	$77,847,744,640
Department of Homeland Security	$73,266,937,210

Embed this chart

Paste this where you want the chart. The picture carries its title, source and credit, under the site’s license.

<figure style="margin:0;max-width:960px">
  <img src="https://americanfactbook.org/embed/chart/spending-top-agencies.svg" alt="Department of Health and Human Services obligated $2.0 trillion in 2025, the largest of any agency" style="width:100%;height:auto" loading="lazy">
  <figcaption style="font:13px/1.4 system-ui,sans-serif">Chart: <a href="https://americanfactbook.org/spending">Department of Health and Human Services obligated $2.0 trillion in 2025, the largest of any agency</a>, American Factbook, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></figcaption>
</figure>

Where the work was performed

All states

North Dakota leads the country at $123,129 of federal obligations per resident, and 91.1% of it comes from one agency

Federal obligations recorded against a place of performance in each state, divided by its population, fiscal year 2025. The legend gives the scale; hatching marks a state where more than 60% of the total comes from a single agency.

Too small to see on the map:District of Columbia$70,535

A place of performance is where an award is administered, not where the money reaches people. A state can lead this map because one agency runs something national from an office there, which is why the share from its largest agency is shown beside the rate and hatched on the map rather than left in a footnote.

Utah is lowest at $8,226 per resident.

The share from one agency is against the sum of the state’s agency rows, which is the denominator those rows came with. USAspending also publishes a state total across every agency, and the two differ by up to half a percent in either direction because they are different aggregations; the share uses the one its numerator came from.

5 jurisdictions are in the data but not on this map, because the boundary file does not draw them: Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands. They are in the table below.

Source: USAspending

About this chart

The figures

North Dakota leads the country at $123,129 of federal obligations per resident, and 91.1% of it comes from one agency. Federal obligations recorded against a place of performance in each state, divided by its population, fiscal year 2025. The legend gives the scale; hatching marks a state where more than 60% of the total comes from a single agency.
State	Per resident	Obligated	Largest agency	Its share
North Dakota	$123,129	$98,424,184,914	Department of Health and Human Services	91.1%
District of Columbia	$70,535	$48,926,451,121	Department of Transportation	21.1%
Connecticut	$41,649	$153,620,716,305	Department of Health and Human Services	58.4%
Minnesota	$41,530	$242,136,924,877	Department of Health and Human Services	81.5%
Kentucky	$37,639	$173,398,327,363	Department of Health and Human Services	73.4%
Indiana	$29,696	$207,079,563,961	Department of Health and Human Services	73.5%
Alaska	$25,027	$18,451,849,071	Department of Health and Human Services	24.8%
South Carolina	$24,620	$137,140,432,549	Department of Health and Human Services	60.4%
Virginia	$24,118	$214,171,594,628	Department of Defense	24.9%
Pennsylvania	$21,560	$281,567,199,244	Department of Health and Human Services	55.2%
New Mexico	$19,511	$41,470,413,220	Department of Energy	27.0%
Wisconsin	$18,912	$112,955,068,932	Department of Health and Human Services	55.9%
Maryland	$16,866	$105,668,263,122	Social Security Administration	27.6%
Tennessee	$16,594	$121,384,346,935	Department of Health and Human Services	47.6%
Hawaii	$15,810	$22,652,990,901	Social Security Administration	31.9%
Maine	$15,568	$22,026,066,650	Social Security Administration	39.4%
Missouri	$14,952	$93,757,333,059	Department of Health and Human Services	36.5%
Arizona	$14,713	$112,170,545,776	Social Security Administration	33.4%
Massachusetts	$14,437	$103,280,713,933	Social Security Administration	33.1%
Florida	$13,853	$325,031,889,023	Social Security Administration	38.2%
Alabama	$13,783	$71,575,305,997	Social Security Administration	38.4%
Vermont	$13,760	$8,870,794,394	Social Security Administration	44.5%
Nebraska	$13,754	$27,755,627,002	Department of Health and Human Services	36.4%
Rhode Island	$13,586	$15,141,669,485	Social Security Administration	39.1%
West Virginia	$13,499	$23,841,502,670	Social Security Administration	45.4%
Montana	$13,422	$15,364,300,172	Social Security Administration	38.8%
Oregon	$13,392	$57,229,948,684	Social Security Administration	39.8%
New York	$13,109	$262,210,347,196	Department of Health and Human Services	40.2%
Mississippi	$13,055	$38,567,262,221	Social Security Administration	40.3%
Louisiana	$12,952	$59,815,467,969	Social Security Administration	36.2%
Michigan	$12,477	$126,369,417,135	Social Security Administration	45.6%
California	$12,343	$485,750,421,988	Department of Health and Human Services	36.2%
South Dakota	$12,299	$11,500,670,218	Social Security Administration	40.1%
Oklahoma	$12,190	$50,262,776,529	Social Security Administration	39.1%
New Hampshire	$12,027	$17,022,898,685	Social Security Administration	51.4%
Wyoming	$11,877	$6,992,356,566	Social Security Administration	44.4%
Colorado	$11,606	$69,782,110,434	Social Security Administration	35.2%
North Carolina	$11,563	$129,485,672,381	Social Security Administration	43.0%
Delaware	$11,547	$12,239,467,583	Social Security Administration	52.7%
Iowa	$11,278	$36,522,824,340	Social Security Administration	45.5%
Idaho	$11,271	$22,876,833,401	Social Security Administration	41.9%
Arkansas	$11,221	$34,951,235,472	Social Security Administration	46.6%
Washington	$11,192	$89,549,222,800	Social Security Administration	41.9%
Ohio	$10,846	$129,078,581,942	Social Security Administration	45.9%
Illinois	$10,584	$134,623,421,823	Social Security Administration	42.8%
Kansas	$10,425	$31,038,738,197	Social Security Administration	47.1%
Nevada	$10,352	$33,976,531,292	Social Security Administration	42.2%
New Jersey	$10,112	$96,548,594,580	Social Security Administration	46.7%
Texas	$9,824	$311,519,896,588	Social Security Administration	36.2%
Georgia	$9,368	$105,885,658,848	Social Security Administration	45.1%
Utah	$8,226	$29,111,266,639	Social Security Administration	39.6%

State figures cover $5.2 trillion of the $5.3 trillion total: work performed abroad, or with no reported place of performance, belongs to no state. State pages therefore do not add up to the national total.

The national picture

USAspending answers who received federal money. It does not answer how much went out, what came in, or what the government owes — those are reported separately, by the Treasury and by the Office of Personnel Management, and they frame everything above.

What kind of spending it is — most federal money is not a contract, and the instruments are not comparable quantities.
Receipts, outlays and the deficit — what the government took in and paid out, month by month, and which departments paid it out.
The national debt — what is owed, to whom, and what the owing costs in interest.
Federal employment — how many civilian employees the government publishes, by state, agency and occupation.

Analysis

Each brief is prose written around values a query returned. Every figure in one is re-checked against its query before it can merge, so a number in the text cannot drift from the data behind it.

Most federal spending is not a contract
Ask what the federal government spends money on and the picture that comes to mind is usually procurement: aircraft, consultants, construction. In fiscal year 2025 the government reported $5.3 trillion of obligations, and contracts were 14.7% of it.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026
The county that receives the most federal money does not
Ask which county receives the most federal money and the federal government's own data gives a clear answer: Hennepin County, with $188.0 billion of obligations recorded in it in fiscal year 2025. It is not a large county. 1,281,565 people live there — fewer than in Los Angeles County, which has 10,014,009 residents, records $80.1 billion, and ranks 7th.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026
The fall in federal spending that was a change of category
Federal obligations reported to USAspending fell between fiscal year 2013 and fiscal year 2014 from $3.97 trillion to $2.79 trillion — a change of -29.8%.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026
The state that receives the most federal money per person
Ask which state receives the most federal money per person and the federal government's own data gives a clear answer: North Dakota, at $123,129 for every one of its 799,358 residents. That is 15.0 times the figure for Utah at the bottom of the same ranking, on $8,226 a resident. Second place goes to District of Columbia on $70,535.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026
What the federal debt costs, and what it now outranks
The Treasury reported $689.2 billion of interest expense on public issues of the federal debt in the last complete fiscal year, 2025. In fiscal year 2015 — the first year of the same published series — it reported $237.3 billion. That is 2.9 times as much over 11 fiscal years.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026
Two official figures for federal spending, $1.71 trillion apart
In fiscal year 2025 the federal government reported $5.3 trillion of obligations on federal awards, and the Treasury reported $7.01 trillion of outlays. Both numbers are official, current, and published by the same department. They are $1.71 trillion apart — a difference of 32.2%.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026
Who the largest federal contractor is, and why there are two answers
Ask who the largest federal contractor is and USAspending gives a clear answer: Lockheed Martin Corporation, with $34.1 billion of contract obligations in fiscal year 2025. Second is Optum Public Sector Solutions, Inc. on $22.5 billion.
American Factbook Research · September 19, 2026

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Everything in this hub

Every page in this topic, by kind.

Questions

One question per page, answered in the first sentence with the figure.

Rankings

Each list ordered by one measure, with the figure behind every entry.

Contractors

Every company the contract archive names by UEI or DUNS number. Shown here: those with the most contract awards terminated; the termination ranking’s find reaches every one.

States

What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in each state.