Treasury Bond Statistics (2026)

The US Treasury market is the largest and most closely watched sovereign bond market in the world. Total federal debt reached about $39.4 trillion in July 2026, and marketable Treasuries outstanding, the tradable slice investors buy and sell, total roughly $30 trillion (see the table below).

That total debt figure first crossed $39 trillion on March 17, 2026 and has grown about $2.8 trillion in a year. Of the total, roughly $31.7 trillion is held by the public and about $7.7 trillion is intragovernmental debt the government owes itself.

The headline debt splits into two very different buckets. Debt held by the public, about $31.7 trillion, is money actually borrowed from investors: banks, funds, households, foreign governments, and the Federal Reserve. It is the figure economists watch because it competes for real savings.

The other roughly $7.7 trillion is intragovernmental holdings: IOUs the Treasury owes to federal trust funds like Social Security. It is real debt, but it circulates inside the government rather than being sold in the open market (Treasury Fiscal Data).

Treasuries come in several flavors defined by maturity. Notes (2 to 10 years) are the workhorse, about half of the outstanding debt. Bills (one year or less) are near 21%, long bonds (20 to 30 years) about 17%, with TIPS around 7% and floating-rate notes about 2% (see the table below).

The mix matters for risk. A debt stack tilted toward short bills reprices quickly when rates move, while long bonds lock in today's yields for decades. Treasury adjusts issuance across tenors through its quarterly refunding to balance cost and rollover risk.

The yield curve plots what the government pays to borrow across maturities. In mid-July 2026 the 3-month bill yielded about 3.85%, the 2-year about 4.21%, the 10-year about 4.56%, and the 30-year about 5.06% (see the chart and table below).

Those par yields are set daily by the Treasury from closing market bids, gathered by the New York Fed near 3:30 PM each trading day. They are the benchmark off which mortgages, corporate bonds, and countless other rates are priced.

For much of 2022-2024 the curve was inverted, with short yields above long ones, a classic recession warning. By mid-2026 it had normalized: the 2s10s spread sat near +35 basis points and the 10-year-minus-3-month gap near +71 basis points, both comfortably positive.

An upward slope means investors are again paid extra to lend for longer, the historically normal shape. It reflects a Fed that has eased off its most restrictive stance while longer yields stay elevated on deficits and term premium.

Today's 4.56% ten-year sits close to the long-run norm but a world away from recent extremes. The 10-year yield hit a modern peak near 15.68% in October 1981 during the Volcker inflation fight, when the Fed pushed its policy rate to about 20%.

The opposite extreme came in August 2020, when the 10-year touched a record low of about 0.55% amid the pandemic. Across the full history the average 10-year yield is about 2.91%, so the 2020-2021 near-zero era was the true anomaly, not today.

Treasuries pay interest and their prices move inversely to yields, so total returns swing year to year. Strong years like 2019 (+9.6%) and 2020 (+11.3%) came as yields fell, while rising-rate years produced losses (see the chart and table below).

Over the long run the 10-year Treasury has returned about 4.7% a year on average since 1928, versus about 3.6% for 3-month bills (NYU Stern). The extra return compensates for the price risk of holding longer maturities.

Bonds are supposed to be the boring, safe part of a portfolio, which is what made 2022 so jarring. As the Fed raised rates at the fastest pace in four decades, the 10-year Treasury lost 17.8%, its worst calendar year on record.

Long-dated Treasuries fared even worse and, by some measures, remained in a drawdown of roughly 40% from their 2020 highs even after years of interest income. It was a hard lesson that duration, not just credit, is a real source of bond risk.

Ownership is more diversified than headlines suggest. Domestic investors (banks, mutual and pension funds, insurers, and households) hold the largest share, roughly $18 trillion, followed by foreign investors at about $9.5 trillion and federal trust funds at about $7.7 trillion (see the table below).

The Federal Reserve is a major holder too, owning about $3.6 trillion of Treasury notes and bonds in early 2026 within its System Open Market Account. The Fed ended its balance-sheet runoff in December 2025 and began small purchases to keep bank reserves ample.

Foreign ownership hit a record $9.5 trillion as of February 2026, up about 6% from a year earlier, even as the foreign share of total debt has drifted down over the decade. Japan is the largest holder at about $1.24 trillion, followed by the UK near $897 billion and China near $760 billion (see the chart and table below).

After the top three, holdings are spread across Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, and France, many of which are financial hubs where global investors custody Treasuries rather than the ultimate owners' home countries.

Japan has steadily added Treasuries, up about $113 billion over 12 months to roughly $1.24 trillion, cementing its spot as the top foreign creditor. UK-based holdings near $897 billion largely reflect London's role as a custody and trading center rather than purely British money.

China's mainland holdings near $760 billion continue a long, gradual decline, down substantially from more than $1.3 trillion a decade ago. The drop reflects diversification and currency management, though China plus Hong Kong combined remains close to $1 trillion.

The Treasury raises cash through regular public auctions of bills, notes, bonds, TIPS, and floating-rate notes, thousands of them a year. Demand is gauged by the bid-to-cover ratio: total bids divided by the amount sold, where a reading above about 2.5 signals healthy appetite.

A 10-year note auction on July 8, 2026 cleared at a 4.580% high yield with a bid-to-cover of 2.59, read as solid demand (Treasury Fiscal Data). Despite record issuance and deficits, auctions have generally cleared without the buyer's strike some feared.

Beyond its size, the Treasury market is prized for liquidity: the ability to trade large amounts fast without moving prices. Average daily trading volume ran about $1.29 trillion in early 2026, up 28% from the prior quarter (SIFMA).

That depth is why Treasuries anchor the global financial system: they serve as the world's benchmark risk-free rate, the collateral behind repo markets, and the safe asset investors flee to in a crisis. Their yields ripple into nearly every other borrowing cost.

For everyday investors, Treasuries play two roles: a source of steady income and a shock absorber that often (though not always, as 2022 showed) rises when stocks fall. Short bills and money-market funds now yield close to 4%, a real return over today's inflation for the first time in years.

The practical takeaways: match the maturity to your time horizon, remember that longer bonds carry more price risk when rates move, and treat Treasuries as ballast rather than a growth engine. Rising net interest costs, now above $1 trillion a year (widely reported), are also why the debt trajectory is worth watching.