The American Distress Index rose from 23 at its 2021 low, when pandemic aid was flowing, to 47 out of 100 in the second quarter of 2026, still well below the 90 it hit in 2009.
We track the data on financial distress, and we stand with the people the system is failing. Here's the data, and here's what you can do.
Below the 2009 peak, above the 2021 low. Higher than 44% of the quarters published since 2005.
A national score, plus a score for every state and county. Sourced, dated and free to cite.
Explore the data →Foreclosure, short sales, debt collectors, bankruptcy: what's happening and what you can do next.
Browse the guides →Downloads, the full method and ready story angles, free to quote.
Press and data kit →Behind on your mortgage? A HUD-approved housing counselor is a free advisor, approved by the government, who can go over your options with your mortgage company. Call (800) 569-4287 or visit consumerfinance.gov/mortgagehelp.
Every county is a number, and a story about how it got there. A few of the places behind the index.
In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote a single sentence about Dougherty County — a pall of debt, a cascade from merchants to tenants to laborers. The passage hasn't ended.
Population peaked at 46,857 in 1940. The drainage never stopped.
In 1896, someone discovered tobacco grown under cloth shade was worth ten times the price. The shade left. The county is still under it.
The boundary is the mechanism.
Tunica County built an economy out of rooms. Gaming floors, hotel towers, buffet halls, back-of-house corridors where 13,000 people used to clock in and out.
Twenty miles downhill, the distress climbs back toward the national middle. Prosperity doesn’t descend.
All 3,144 counties on one scale. Of all the variation in county scores, 45% lies within states rather than between them. Georgia's 159 counties run from 1 to 99. A state average hides that.
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The score is the share of other U.S. counties less distressed, as a whole number, so the top counties all sit near 100. The rank sorts them.
Treasury's latest Homeowner Assistance Fund report shows South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming spent less than half their awards by March 2026. What spent means, what happens to the leftover money, and where to get help.
Inside one quarter of the American Distress Index: how far its inputs sit from each other, what the disagreement is made of, why the domain weighting is not the cause, and the test showing the spread does not predict where the composite goes next.
The Repo Line's first quarterly decline since 2023 is the median decline in its own record. Why the series' own history cannot tell us whether the climb has ended, and what would have to happen before anyone could say.
County scores, American Distress Index updates and indicator alerts, sent when the numbers move. No spam.