How Distressed Are Consumers? Reconciling Diverging Credit Card Delinquency Measures

The New York Federal Reserve's latest report on household debt and credit reveals a slight decline in total debt balances by $13 billion in the second quarter of 2026. Mortgage and student loan balances both saw a small decrease, while other debt products experienced increases. Despite this, delinquency rates across most products have remained steady.

However, the percentage of credit card balances 90 days or more delinquent has risen from 7.6% in the third quarter of 2022 to 12.8% in the first quarter of 2026, raising concerns about Americans' ability to meet their debt obligations, similar to levels seen during the Great Recession. Yet, the flow delinquency rate, which measures the rate of new delinquencies, has remained relatively stable for the past two years.

To better understand the current state of consumers and explain the difference between the two delinquency measures, this analysis uses data from the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (CCP). The analysis finds that the stock delinquency rate is rising due to a large pool of overdue debts that lenders have been reporting for longer periods rather than a fundamental increase in the occurrence of delinquency.

Three different delinquency measures are presented in a chart: the "stock" delinquency rate, computed as the share of outstanding balance reported as 90+ days past due on credit reports, the Board's delinquency rate calculated as the share of outstanding balance 30+ days past due on lenders' balance sheets, and the flow into 90+ days past due, a measure of new transitions into delinquency from the Quarterly Report.

The trends in the Call Report series and the flow series are very similar, both having leveled off recently, while the blue line, depicting stock delinquency, has been rising steadily since around 2023.