US Federal Interest Payments: Quarterly BEA Data from FRED (1947–2026)

The US Federal Interest Payments series measures the federal government’s current interest expenditures, quarterly at a seasonally adjusted annual rate since 1947 — from $5 billion after WWII to $1.22 trillion in early 2026. Sourced from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (NIPA accounts) via FRED, it is the cash-flow counterpart of the debt stock: the number that actually competes with defense, Medicare, and every other budget line. Between early 2021 and late 2025, this series doubled — from $534 billion to over $1.2 trillion annualized.

Dataset: US Federal Interest Payments (1947–2026) · Updated 2026-04-01

Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis (NIPA) · FRED series A091RC1Q027SBEA

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.

A value of 1,218.9 means interest was being paid at a pace of $1.22 trillion per year during that quarter.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

FRED Direct CSV Access

The underlying data is available from FRED under series code A091RC1Q027SBEA:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=A091RC1Q027SBEA

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-federal-interest-payments.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-federal-interest-payments.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(f"Latest annualized: ${df['federal_interest_payments'].iloc[-1]:.0f}B")
print(df.tail())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-federal-interest-payments.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

tail(df)
summary(df$federal_interest_payments)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

A091RC1Q027SBEA comes from the BEA’s National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA Table 3.2): federal government current expenditures on interest. It is an accrual-based national-accounts measure covering interest on the entire federal debt, reported at a seasonally adjusted annual rate — each quarterly value expresses the annual pace of payments during that quarter.

This NIPA concept differs from two commonly cited alternatives. The CBO/OMB “net interest” budget line excludes interest paid to federal trust funds and is measured on a fiscal-year cash basis — typically smaller than the NIPA gross figure. The Treasury’s “interest expense” is a monthly cash accounting of actual outlays. All three tell the same directional story; levels differ by definitional scope.

This dataset is updated daily (Mon–Sat, 08:00 UTC) via automated pull from the FRED API; new quarterly observations appear with the BEA’s GDP release cycle.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

• Release latency. Published with the quarterly NIPA releases (~1 month after quarter end for the advance estimate), then refined in the second and third estimates.
• Revisions policy. Revised in each subsequent NIPA vintage and in annual/comprehensive benchmark revisions. Recent quarters can move by a few billion; the historical shape is stable.
• Concept scope. Gross federal interest on a NIPA accrual basis — includes interest credited to government trust funds. Not directly comparable to CBO “net interest” without adjustment.
• Alternative sources. Treasury Monthly Statement (cash basis), CBO budget projections (fiscal-year net interest), OMB historical tables.
• Known gaps. None; continuous quarterly coverage since 1947.

Common Pitfalls When Using Federal Interest Payments

1. Mixing interest concepts. NIPA gross interest (this series), CBO net interest, and Treasury cash interest differ by scope and timing. Comparing a headline from one against a chart of another produces spurious “discrepancies.”
2. Forgetting the SAAR convention. Each value is an annualized pace, not the amount paid within the quarter. Summing four quarterly values does not give annual interest; averaging them does.
3. Reading nominal records as burden records. Every recent quarter is a nominal all-time high — as is nominal GDP. Burden statements require the GDP-scaled ratio, which remains below its 1991 peak.
4. Expecting the bill to track the policy rate in real time. The average rate on the stock adjusts only as debt matures and rolls over. Interest payments kept climbing through 2024–2025 despite Fed easing — a maturity-structure effect, not a data error.

Historical Regimes

1947–1965 — Postwar cheap money. Interest costs stayed in single-digit billions for years ($5.4B in 1947), as capped-then-low rates and rapid growth shrank the WWII debt burden without ever repaying the stock.

1966–1981 — Inflation-era drift. The bill climbed steadily with rates and deficits, but high inflation eroded the real burden — nominal interest rose while the real cost of servicing the debt was often negative.

1982–1997 — The first interest wall. The Volcker rate shock met the Reagan-era debt buildup: payments accelerated to a pace of roughly $308 billion annualized by late 1991 — then the heaviest burden in the postwar record relative to GDP. “Net interest” became a top-three budget line and a driver of the 1990s consolidation.

1998–2021 — The free-debt decades. Despite the debt stock quadrupling, the bill stayed in a $250–550 billion band for over twenty years: each refinancing rolled onto ever-lower coupons. Q1 2021 marked the extreme of the regime — $534 billion annualized on $28 trillion of debt, an average rate below 2%.

2022–2026 — The great repricing. The fastest hiking cycle since 1981 hit the largest debt stock in history: from $637 billion (Q1 2022) to $1,071 billion (Q1 2024), peaking at $1,227 billion annualized in Q4 2025 — a doubling in under four years. Interest surpassed defense spending in annual budget terms during this stretch, moving debt service from a footnote to the center of US fiscal debate.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

The interest bill sits at the intersection of the debt stock and the rate structure. The series below cover both inputs and the scaled output.

Macroeconomic Dataset Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.

Sources

• US Bureau of Economic Analysis — NIPA Table 3.2, federal current interest expenditures
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED series A091RC1Q027SBEA

Dataset Reference