How the federal spending figures are made

An obligation is not money spent

Spending figures come from USAspending, the Treasury’s own record of federal awards. Almost everything on these pages is an obligation: a binding commitment to pay, recorded when an award is made. It is not money out of the door. An agency can obligate in one year what it pays over several, and a figure for a year is what was committed in it, not what was disbursed. Where a page shows outlays instead — money actually paid — it says so in the column heading, and the two are never added together.

A negative figure is not an error. A deobligation reverses a commitment that was not spent, and in a period where deobligations exceed obligations the net is below zero. Pages that carry one say what it means rather than hiding it, because hiding it would also stop the parts summing to the total.

Where an award is recorded is not where it lands

A state, county or district figure is the place of performance the award records. A place of performance is where an award record says most of its work will be done: in USAspending’s words, “the address where the predominant performance of the award will be accomplished.” It is reported, not verified, and it is not a record of where the money was spent. An agency whose awards record one state as the place of performance for national work puts its whole figure there, which is why a small state can lead the country per resident. A contractor headquartered in one county can be paid for work done in fifty.

Per-resident figures divide by the Census population for the same period, and the vintage and the source of that population are printed beside them. A jurisdiction USAspending reports and the Census has no denominator for gets a total and no rate, rather than a rate over a number we chose.

Insurance, and the break at FY2014

Obligations are reported by award type. We show insurance — the publisher’s award type 09 — as its own category rather than inside “other”, because it is neither small nor steady: USAspending reported $1.4 trillion of it in FY2013 and $8.7 billion in FY2014. That fall is a change in what agencies reported, not a change in federal spending, and a total that includes insurance falls with it. Insurance figures are face value, like a loan guarantee, not money paid. Charts spanning FY2014 draw the series both with insurance and without, so the break is visible rather than described.

Direct payments largely unreported in FY2010–11

The Department of Health and Human Services’ direct payments in FY2010 and FY2011, as USAspending published them, are $241.6 billion and $1.7 billion, against $466.5 billion in FY2009 and $543.9 billion in FY2012, while its grants and contracts run on unbroken. That is a gap in what was reported, not a fall in what was paid. We print both years as the publisher’s values, mark them on the department’s chart, and compare no year with either. A check runs every agency’s series for the same shape; the other dips it finds are not called gaps until an independent record of what each agency paid out can say which they are.

Fiscal years, fiscal months, and the open year

The federal fiscal year runs from October to September, so FY2026 began in October 2025. USAspending numbers its months the same way — month 1 is October and month 12 is September — and we label them by the calendar month they actually are. Anyone comparing our monthly figures against the API directly should expect that offset.

The current fiscal year is partial and is never presented as complete. Agencies submit for months after they end, so the most recent months are not merely incomplete but unfinished: a month can show a fraction of what it will eventually hold. A year is complete when the calendar says so, not when twelve months have a row, and a page that would otherwise compare a part-year against whole ones excludes it or marks it.

What a recipient is, and is not

A recipient is a registration, not a company. The same organization can hold several registrations under different identifiers and appear as several rows, and organizations change name and identifier over time. Where a ranking would otherwise imply that a row is a company, the page says how many registrations carry that name. Names are published as the recipient registered them, including their capitalisation.

What this data cannot show

• USAspending reports obligations and outlays as submitted by agencies. It is not an audited financial statement.
• Award records are revised after publication; a figure is only as current as the snapshot it was drawn from.
• A place of performance is where an award record says most of its work will be done: in USAspending’s words, “the address where the predominant performance of the award will be accomplished.” It is reported, not verified, and it is not a record of where the money was spent.

Sources

• USAspending API v2 — U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service · U.S. Government work, public domain · Updated: Daily, with monthly agency submissions
• Treasury Fiscal Data — U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service · U.S. Government work, public domain · Updated: Daily and monthly by dataset
• OPM FedScope — U.S. Office of Personnel Management · U.S. Government work, public domain · Updated: Quarterly, with annual accessions and separations
• OMB Historical Tables, Table 4.1 — Office of Management and Budget · U.S. Government work, public domain · Updated: Annual, with the President’s Budget