Dive Brief:

• Credit card debt rose $27 billion in the second quarter, pushing up that type of household debt by 2.4% over the first quarter to $1.14 trillion, according to a new quarterly report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data. The card debt was up 10.8% over the year-earlier quarter.
• The percentage of credit card accounts that entered “serious delinquency,” meaning they were 90 days or more delinquent, increased to 7.18% in the second quarter, up from 5.08% in the year-ago quarter, said a New York Fed press release Tuesday for the report. About 9.1% of the card balances shifted to delinquency status over the past year, after having risen steadily since the first quarter of 2022, per the report.
• Meanwhile, second-quarter aggregate cumulative limits on credit cards rose by 1.4%, about $69 billion, over the first quarter, the report said.

Dive Insight:

More consumers are falling behind on their credit card debt relative to other forms of debt. The percentage of balances over 90 days delinquent was the highest for credit card debt, followed by auto loans, student loans, mortgages and home equity lines of credit, according to the New York Fed’s second-quarter report.

“Serious delinquency” is hitting younger cardholders particularly hard. Credit card borrowers aged 18-years-old to 29-years-old led the transition into serious delinquency, followed by borrowers aged 30 to 39, and then the group 40 to 49, the New York Fed report said.

In a call with reporters, New York Fed researchers noted that the delinquency rate for borrowers aged 30 to 39 has exceeded levels before the COVID-19 pandemic struck the U.S. in early 2020. Regarding the factors that could be driving that group to fall behind on their credit card payments, the researchers speculated the cohort may have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Rising housing costs could be another factor, they noted. 

“If they are more likely to be renters, they may be more exposed to rent price increases that may be stretching their wallets a little bit more than older borrowers who may benefit from home-ownership and stable housing payments,” a New York Fed researcher said during the call. 

The research from the Center for Microeconomic Data builds on other reports indicating that credit card debt continues to strain consumers’ wallets. The uptick in credit card delinquencies started in 2022 and surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter, particularly among low-income communities, previous research from the New York Fed found. 

The Fed’s latest report signals that U.S. credit card balances have been continuing to climb since the end of 2023. In the fourth quarter of last year, credit card balances among U.S. consumers rose 4.6% to $1.13 trillion over the prior quarter, the New York Fed found.