Credit Card Delinquencies at the Highest Level Since 2011
This article is published in collaboration with Statista
by Felix Richter
It’s no secret that many Americans are struggling to stay afloat, living paycheck to paycheck as they juggle payments for groceries, medical bills and other expenses. In this environment, it’s no surprise that credit card debt is at record highs. According to data from the New York Fed’s latest Household Debt and Credit Report, Americans collectively hold $1.26 trillion in credit card debt, up more than 40 percent over the past four years.
And while credit card debt is not a problem per se – as credit card balances are arguably more indicative of spending than they are of borrowing these days and most credit card debt is paid off every month without accruing interest – a growing number of Americans are struggling to pay their credit card bills on time. According to the New York Fed, 12.9 percent of credit card debt in Q2 2026 was seriously delinquent, i.e. at least 90 days late. While that's a slight improvement from 13.1 percent in the previous quarter, it's still higher than at any point since Q2 2011, when people were still reeling from the aftershock of the Great Recession.
As our chart shows, the share of the overall credit card balance that was seriously delinquent has risen steeply since 2023, suggesting that more and more Americans are struggling to pay off their credit card debt. That is only half the story, however, as a closer look at the chart reveals: While the overall delinquency rate has risen more or less continuously since 2023, the transition rate into seriously delinquency has held steady around 7 percent since 2024. In a blog post the New York Fed attributes this divergence to a growing “pool of stale, charged-off debts that lenders have been reporting for longer durations.”
Lenders typically charge off unpaid loans once they’re 120 to 180 days past due, at which point they are written off as an accounting loss. These charged-off balances are still owed by borrowers, however, which is why they still show up in the credit report. And in fact, data shows that the latest increase in credit card delinquency has been driven almost entirely by such severely derogatory (i.e. charged-off) balances. Now, according to the New York Fed, part of the reason for the accumulation of these balances is the fact that lenders have changed their reporting practices. “Between 2004 and 2012, only about 40 percent of borrowers’ charged-off debts were still being reported one year later; by 2024, this figure had doubled to 80 percent.” And while this doesn’t mean that consumers are doing well – after all millions of Americans carry this unpaid, charged-off credit card debt – it does caveat the latest surge in credit card delinquency rates. The authors note that to find out how households are doing right now the flow delinquency rates provide a more accurate view. At 7 percent, the transition rate into serious delinquency may not have changed much since early 2024, but it remains higher than at any point between 2011 and 2024.
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