preCharge News BUSINESS — Nearly 43 million Americans owe a total of $1.6 billion in federal student loans as of the end of 2024, according to Department of Education data.

A number of factors determine how much debt borrowers wind up with and how quickly they’re able to pay it off, including how expensive their schooling was and whether they had savings or scholarship earnings to pay tuition up front.

Similarly, your city’s local cost of living and average earnings can play a role in your ability to pay down debt. 

Student loan borrowers in Maryland, which has a higher cost of living than many states and a large population of college graduates, have the highest average outstanding balances, according to a recent SmartAsset analysis of ED data. 

The 844,600 residents with federal student loan debt in Maryland owe an average of $43,867, the most in the U.S., SmartAsset finds. Borrowers in Georgia follow closely with an average outstanding balance of $42,135. Virginia is the only other state where the average balance sits above $40,000.

Here’s the average federal student debt balance in all 50 states.

Who student debt affects

You may assume younger borrowers who recently graduated and may not be making a lot of money would have larger debt balances, but that’s not the case.

Nationally, borrowers ages 24 and younger owe an average of just over $14,000 in federal student debt, compared with an average of over $43,000 among borrowers ages 62 and older, according to federal data. 

Some of those older borrowers took out loans to help someone else, like a child or grandchild, pay for college. But most are still in debt from their own education, a recent National Consumer Law Center study found.

President Joe Biden and his administration took steps toward lowering both the number of borrowers with outstanding debt and the total balance through loan forgiveness programs, but progress on that front that seems less likely under President Donald Trump.

The Biden administration cleared debt balances for over 5 million borrowers through Public Service Loan Forgiveness, disability and closed school discharges, income-driven repayment plans and other initiatives.

But the Trump administration has so far moved to eliminate some of those pathways to forgiveness by proposing stricter requirements for PSLF and moving to limit income-driven repayment plan options.

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Associated Press, CNBC News, Fox News, and preCharge News contributed to this report.

This is a developing news story. More information will be provided as soon as it becomes available.