Indicators

96 indicators tracking what happens when household finances break down. Some measure how fast the buffer is disappearing. Others track what comes next — the delinquencies, the filings, the charge-offs. Each one is a single thread in the pattern the American Distress Index follows.

Savings

14 indicators

How much financial cushion American households have left

Personal Savings Rate

Share of after-tax income Americans are saving each month — at 4%, near the lowest level since 2007

Could Handle a $1,000 Emergency With Savings

41% — down from 44% a year ago; the rest borrow or skip it

Can't Cover a $400 Surprise Expense

37% — unchanged from a year ago; 1 in 3 adults still can't cover it with cash

Workers Raiding Their Retirement Savings

6.0% — up from 4.8% a year ago, triple the pre-pandemic rate. Sixth consecutive annual increase.

Households Spending 95%+ of Income on Bills

24.0% — up from 23.7% a year ago, almost nothing left after necessities

Buy Now Pay Later Debt Outstanding

$65.3B — up from $54.6B a year ago, invisible to lenders and credit scores

Share of Income Going to Debt Payments

11.3% of disposable income now goes to mortgage, credit card, auto, and student loan payments — rising with interest rates

Total Monthly Obligations as Share of Income

Debt payments plus rent, auto leases, homeowner insurance, and property tax — broader than debt service alone

Share of Income Going to Mortgage Payments

Just the mortgage portion of household debt service — how much of your paycheck the house takes

Total Consumer Credit Owed (Excluding Mortgages)

All non-mortgage consumer debt: credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and personal loans combined

Credit Card and Revolving Debt Outstanding

Total balance on credit cards and other revolving accounts — does not include auto or student loans

Home Equity Lines of Credit Outstanding

How much homeowners have borrowed against their home equity — rising means people are tapping their houses

Workers With an Outstanding 401(k) Loan

13% — holding steady; 1 in 8 workers owe money back to their own 401(k)

Credit Card Utilization — Higher-Balance Borrowers

Borrowers at the 75th percentile are using 53.99% of their available credit — a sign of maxing out

Debt

15 indicators

Late payments, charge-offs, and total debt across credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and mortgages

Credit Card Balances Past Due

2.94% of credit card balances are delinquent — down from the 2024 peak but still above the 2.6% pre-pandemic norm

Credit Card Debt Banks Have Written Off as Losses

4.11% of credit card balances declared uncollectable — the bank gave up trying to collect

Credit Card Accounts 30+ Days Past Due

Share of credit card loan balances at least a month behind — as reported by all U.S. commercial banks

Average Interest Rate on Credit Cards

If you carry a balance, you're paying about 21% annually — the highest rate ever recorded

Auto Loans 90+ Days Past Due

5.21% of auto loan balances are seriously overdue — three or more missed payments, repossession territory

Student Loans 90+ Days Delinquent

9.6% of student loan balances are seriously delinquent — back near pre-pandemic levels within a year of the payment pause ending

Non-Card Consumer Loans 30+ Days Past Due

Personal loans, installment loans, and other consumer credit (not cards or auto) — the smaller debt types

Credit Card Delinquency at Smaller Banks

Banks outside the top 100 show 6.62% delinquency vs. 2.94% overall — smaller banks serve riskier borrowers

All Household Debt in Any Stage of Past-Due

4.81% of all outstanding household debt — mortgages, cards, auto, student loans combined — is behind on payments

Total U.S. Household Debt

Every dollar Americans owe: mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and HELOCs — $18.78 trillion

$18.78T Q4 2025

Gap Between Big Bank and Small Bank Delinquency

Large banks show 3.68 percentage points higher credit card delinquency than small banks — the distress is concentrated at the biggest card issuers

3.68 pts Q4 2025

Subprime Share of New Auto and Card Originations

2.58% — up from 2.56% a year ago; subprime delinquency creeping back up

Credit Card Accounts 60+ Days Past Due

3.03% — up from 2.91% last quarter; bankcard 60+ day delinquency still climbing

Auto Loans Seriously Past Due (NY Fed Data)

Share of auto loan balances 90+ days overdue based on credit report data — a direct measure of who's about to lose their car

ABA Discretionary Loan Delinquency

Data collection pending

Housing

9 indicators

Mortgage stress, foreclosures, and housing affordability

FHA-Insured Mortgages 30+ Days Past Due

11.52% — up from 11.03% a year ago, government-backed loans at 6.5x the conventional rate

Mortgages 90+ Days Delinquent

1.78% of mortgage balances are seriously delinquent — flat for eight quarters, historically low, and the quietest part of the distress picture

Mortgages 90+ Days Past Due

3.12% of all consumer loan balances are three or more months behind — the stage where delinquency hardens into default

Foreclosure Filings, Year-Over-Year Change

New foreclosure filings up 32% vs. last year — default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions

Median Sale Price of Existing Homes

The middle sale price of homes sold — affects affordability and whether underwater homeowners can sell their way out

$405,300 Q4 2025

Foreclosure Starts-to-Completions Ratio

4.75 — down from 6.55 a year ago; the foreclosure pipeline is draining

First Missed Mortgage Payment Rate

0.7% — down from 0.8% a year ago; early-stage mortgage trouble easing slightly

New Mortgage Loans Issued

Dollar volume of new mortgages — when this drops, fewer people can afford to buy or refinance

NMHC Rent Payment Tracker (Discontinued)

Data collection pending

Jobs

13 indicators

Weekly layoff filings, monthly job numbers, wage growth, and who's hiring

New Unemployment Filings This Week

212,000 workers filed for unemployment for the first time — a real-time weekly pulse on layoffs nationwide

214,000 Apr 18, 2026

People Still Collecting Unemployment

1.83 million Americans receiving ongoing unemployment benefits — measures how long people stay jobless

1,821,000 Apr 11, 2026

Announced Job Cuts (Challenger Report)

108K — up from 50K a year ago; announced cuts more than doubled

Workers Voluntarily Quitting Their Jobs

Only 2% of workers quit in December — when people stop quitting, they don't think they can find something better

Official Unemployment Rate

4.3% of the labor force is actively looking for work and can't find it — the headline number everyone watches

Unemployment + Underemployment Rate

8% when you add part-timers who want full-time work and discouraged workers who stopped looking entirely

Total Jobs in the U.S. Economy

Monthly count of how many jobs exist — when this number stops growing, trouble is starting

158,637 Mar 2026

Working Part-Time Because Full-Time Isn't Available

4.5 million Americans want full-time hours but can only find part-time work

Are Wages Keeping Up With Prices?

Bottom-quartile wage growth minus CPI inflation — negative means the lowest-paid workers are losing purchasing power

Wage Growth for the Lowest-Paid Workers

Pay increases for the bottom 25% of earners — 3.5% growth doesn't help if inflation is higher

Job Postings Relative to Pre-Pandemic Levels

105.3 means job ads are roughly 5.3% above the Feb 2020 baseline — shows whether employers are still hiring

105.27 Apr 17, 2026

WARN Act Layoff Notices Filed This Month

Data collection pending

Households Reporting Recent Employment Income Loss

Data collection pending

Prices

15 indicators

How fast groceries, rent, gas, and healthcare are getting more expensive

Overall Inflation Rate (Year-Over-Year)

Prices across the entire economy are 2.83% higher than a year ago — the broadest measure of inflation

Grocery Price Inflation (Year-Over-Year)

What you pay at the supermarket is rising 3.1% annually — one of the prices people feel every single week

Car Insurance Price Inflation

Auto insurance costs rising 6.94% year-over-year — one of the fastest-climbing mandatory expenses

Healthcare Cost Inflation

Medical care prices up 3.2% — doctor visits, hospital bills, prescription drugs, and health insurance

Energy Price Inflation

Gas, electricity, and utility costs — up 11.3% year-over-year, whiplashing from near-flat 2025 readings to the largest one-month spike in two years

11.32% Mar 2026

How Much Groceries Have Risen Since 2020

Cumulative grocery price increase of 32.65% since Jan 2020 — even if inflation slows, the damage is already done

32.65% Mar 2026

Housing Cost Inflation (Rent + Owners' Equivalent)

The cost of keeping a roof over your head is rising 3.2% — the single biggest line item in most budgets

Student Loan Payments as Share of Income

20.0% — up from 16.0% a year ago, one of every five dollars earned

Year-Over-Year Change in Prescription Drug Prices

Prescription drug prices are down 2.2% year-over-year — one of the few CPI categories actively providing cost relief

How Much Faster Medical Costs Rise Than Overall Prices

Medical CPI is now running slightly below the overall CPI — a brief reprieve after years of medical inflation outpacing the headline rate

-0.13 pts Mar 2026

Share of Weekly Earnings It Takes to Buy a Gallon of Gas

Gas prices are consuming 1.1% of median weekly earnings per gallon — still below the 2008 and 2014 peaks of 1.16 and 1.11, but the highest reading since the 2022 shock

How Fast Car Insurance Is Outrunning Inflation

Auto insurance premiums are rising 3.6 percentage points faster than the broader CPI — a gap that widened again after briefly cooling

3.62 pts Mar 2026

How Much Faster Wages Grow Than Food Prices

Wages are now running just 0.4 percentage points ahead of food-at-home inflation, down from a +1.5pp cushion a year ago

0.38 pts Mar 2026

Share of Disposable Income Consumed by Energy

Household energy spending eats 3.3% of disposable income — off the 4.7% 2022 peak but stuck above recent pre-pandemic lows

Household Share of Income Eaten by Tariffs

Estimated tariff cost hit 1.72% of disposable income in 2025 — more than double the 0.7% level that held from 2019 through 2024

Courts

8 indicators

Bankruptcy filings, consumer complaints, and what happens when people can't pay

Consumer Bankruptcy Filings (Year-Over-Year Change)

Bankruptcy filings up 20% vs. last year — the legal system's count of who has formally given up

Ratio of Total Wipeout to Repayment Plan Bankruptcies

1.72x more people choosing Chapter 7 liquidation over Chapter 13 repayment — means people can't even attempt to pay back

All-Loan Charge-Off Rate

0.61% of all bank loan balances have been written off as uncollectable — triple the 2021 floor and still elevated

Mortgage Charge-Off Rate

0.0% of mortgage balances have been written off — essentially zero for five years running, nothing like the 2.8% GFC peak

"Start Over" Bankruptcies (Year-Over-Year Change)

20.1% — up from 8.3% a year ago, all qualifying debt erased because there's nothing left

"Repayment Plan" Bankruptcies (Year-Over-Year Change)

10% — down from 19.5% a year ago; growth slowing as Chapter 7 surges instead

Consumer Financial Complaints Filed With the Government

616,117 complaints about banks, lenders, and debt collectors filed with the CFPB — a proxy for how often people feel cheated

616,325 Mar 2026

Utility Service Disconnections

Data collection pending

Warning Signs

8 indicators

Surveys and financial signals that have historically predicted trouble before it arrives

Consumer Confidence: How Americans Feel About Their Finances

University of Michigan survey — 53.3 is deeply pessimistic territory, below 60 has preceded every recession since 1980

Consumer Expectations for the Next 6 Months

72 — down from 72.9 a year ago, below the 80-point threshold that preceded every recession since 1967

Financial System Stress Level (Chicago Fed)

Measures how easily money flows through the system — negative means loose, positive means credit is getting harder to get

-0.42 Apr 17, 2026

Are Banks Making It Harder to Get a Loan?

Net share of banks tightening lending standards — 0% means standards are unchanged from last quarter

Gap Between Wage Growth and Inflation

When wages grow faster than prices, workers gain ground — at 0.48 pts, workers are barely keeping ahead

0.48 pts Mar 2026

How Often Americans Search for Help With Bills

64 — up from 42 a year ago, what Americans are searching when they're in trouble

Americans Receiving Food Stamps (SNAP)

41.7M — down from 42.2M a year ago; still 5 million above pre-pandemic levels

41,700,000 Sep 2024

Gap Between Low-Income and High-Income Spending Growth

-9.9 pts — essentially unchanged; holiday spending vs. January reality

-9.9 pts Jun 2024

Who's Hurting

8 indicators

Food stamps, homelessness, and the demographics of who's falling through the cracks

Households Having Trouble Paying Usual Expenses

40.8% of households report difficulty covering the usual bills — a reading that has barely moved in four years

Share of Americans in "Poor" Financial Health

30% — unchanged from a year ago; nearly 1 in 3 in 'poor' financial health

Americans Without a Full Bank Account

4.2% — down from 4.5% two years ago; a record low, halved from 8.2% in 2011

States Where Credit Card Delinquency Has Passed 10%

36 — up from 29 a year ago, credit card trouble spreading geographically

Adults Who Skipped a Bill Payment in the Past Quarter

18.5% — up from 16.7% a year ago, skipping bills to make ends meet

Americans Who Can't Reliably Afford Enough Food

13.5% — up from 12.8% a year ago, the worst reading since 2014

Americans Enrolled in Medicaid

76.8M — down from 79M; unwinding pushing people off rolls, not into coverage

76,800,000 Sep 2025

Americans Experiencing Homelessness

771,480 — up from 653,104 a year ago; roughly the population of Seattle

AI & Work

6 indicators

Tracking AI's growing ability to do human work — and the jobs disappearing because of it

Businesses Using AI in Their Operations

10.0% — up from 6.6% a year ago, nearly 3x the rate two years ago

How Quickly AI Is Learning to Do Human Work

719 hours — up from 60 hours a year ago; AI can now work autonomously for over 4 weeks

Job Cuts Where Companies Cited AI as a Reason

8K — down from 31K last quarter; a category that didn't exist 3 years ago

Tech Sector Job Postings

101K — down from 106K a year ago, down 53% from the 2022 peak

Unemployment Rate for Young Workers (16-24)

Young workers are the first to lose hours and last to get hired — this group gets hit first when the economy turns

Share of Job Postings Mentioning AI Skills

Data collection pending

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