As credit card debt hit an all-time high — just shy of $1 trillion — in the final three months of 2022, delinquencies among borrowers accelerated.
Balances grew $61 billion in the fourth quarter from the previous one to $986 billion, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found. That marked the largest quarterly increase and the highest total since the series began in 1999.
At the same time, the rate at which credit card holders missed payments and became more than 90 days behind was higher than before the pandemic, especially among younger borrowers, a potentially worrying sign when the student loan pause lifts later this year.
“Although historically low unemployment has kept consumer’s financial footing generally strong, stubbornly high prices and climbing interest rates may be testing some borrowers’ ability to repay their debts,” Wilbert van der Klaauw, an economic research advisor at the New York Fed, said in a statement.
The $130 billion year-over-year increase in credit card debt, also the highest annual gain on record per the New York Fed, came as interest rates on credit cards also hit new highs.
The average rate is near 20%, according to Bankrate, surpassing levels from the last 37 years. Credit card rates move in lockstep with the federal funds rate, the benchmark rate the Federal Reserve has been hiking aggressively to stave off runaway inflation.
Higher consumer prices is another culprit behind rising credit card balances, the researchers said, noting the pace of inflation reached a 40-year high last summer.
“Americans have been facing higher prices everywhere…including on purchases they may be putting on their credit cards — at the grocery store, at the gas pump, and for many other types of goods,” the researchers wrote in a blog post accompanying the report. “It is possible that increasing prices — and correspondingly, debt service payments — are cutting into borrowers’ balance sheets and making it more difficult for them to make ends meet.”
The report also showed that more auto loan borrowers are having trouble keeping up with their monthly payments, again especially among younger borrowers. Higher interest rates largely can’t be blamed for this increase because most auto loans have fixed rates, the researchers noted. The monthly payments of newer loans, though, are higher, reflecting the run-up in car prices during the pandemic.
The researchers noted that the rise in delinquency levels for both credit cards and auto loans could simply be a “reversion to pre-pandemic” norms now that much of the unprecedented level of government support has run out.
“This leaves us with a critical question though — will these delinquency rates continue to rise, or will they flatten out now?” the researchers wrote.
A lingering concern, they noted, is the ending of the student loan payment pause at the end of June. Younger borrowers, who were more likely last quarter to struggle with making payments, are also more likely to have benefited from the student loan forbearance. What happens when those payments start back up, especially if the Supreme Court overturns President Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness?
“There’s no question that the student loan moratorium has been a big deal and has allowed them to really knock down a lot of credit card debt,” Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst for LendingTree, previously told Yahoo Finance. “It’s definitely troubling to think what’s going to happen to delinquency rates once everybody has to start making student loan payments again.”
