World Clock / United States / vs Ethiopia

🇺🇸 United States vs 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The United States currently owes about 772.4× as much as Ethiopia — a gap of $40.32 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

🇺🇸
United States
$40,369,339,536,006
Debt-to-GDP124%
Per citizen$117,750
Per second+$60,200
VS
🇪🇹
Ethiopia
$52,265,080,165
Debt-to-GDP43%
Per citizen$465
Per second−$94
In nominal terms, the United States carries the larger government debt — roughly 772.4× that of Ethiopia, a difference of $40.32 trillion. Debt-to-GDP (United States: 124%, Ethiopia: 43%) says more about the burden than the raw total does.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, the United States ranks 12th by debt-to-GDP and Ethiopia 92nd. Measured per person, the United States is 2nd and Ethiopia 129th.

Analysis

By total government debt, the United States ranks 1st and Ethiopia 78th among the 135 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in the United States is roughly 253.2× that in Ethiopia ($117,750 vs $465 per person).

The debt-to-GDP picture is asymmetric here: the United States sits at 124% of GDP, well above Ethiopia's 43%, meaning the United States owes far more relative to the size of its own economy — even where the nominal, dollar-for-dollar comparison above suggests otherwise.

The gap between them is widening: the United States' debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($60K/sec vs −$94/sec for Ethiopia), adding roughly $5,209,401,600 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the United States' population (343M) is about 3.1× Ethiopia's (112M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

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Source: Global Debt Clock, based on the IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2026, general government gross debt) and US Treasury data for the United States.
Live data: /api/compare?a=us&b=et · United States page · Ethiopia page
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