Utility Service Disconnections

Utility shutoff is one of the earliest and most common forms of household distress. It precedes eviction. It precedes bankruptcy. It often precedes a missed rent or mortgage payment — households triage by paying the creditor most likely to take action fastest, and utilities are usually near the front of the line.

And we cannot track it in real time. The Energy Information Administration's Form 861 collects some disconnection data, but it's annual, lagged by roughly a year, and does not capture disconnections as a standardized variable across utilities. Water utilities are not covered federally at all. State public service commissions release shutoff data in inconsistent formats on inconsistent schedules. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program releases aggregate assistance data, not shutoff counts.

This indicator is deferred rather than populated. We list it because the gap is part of the story. When Credit Card Delinquency rises, we know within a quarter. When Foreclosure Starts climb, we know within a month. When the same household loses power because a paycheck came late, the federal data will tell us next year, maybe.

The absence of the signal does not mean the signal isn't happening. State-level data that does exist points to elevated shutoff activity through 2024 and 2025. Getting this into the tracker at monthly frequency is the kind of gap independent researchers are best positioned to fill.