Delinquency rates rise for some types of household debt
Delinquency rates rise for some types of household debt
We learned a lot about the state of labor last week with the December jobs report. And this week, we’re going to learn about the state of lending.
Monday, the Federal Reserve told us that the amount of consumer credit rose almost 6% in November, mostly thanks to a pickup in credit card debt and other types of revolving credit.
And later this week, the country’s big banks are going to release their latest earnings reports. Those will give us a sense of whether banks’ existing loans are healthy, or if some people are starting to fall behind on their payments.
But for now, we are seeing signs that delinquency rates are rising. One area where delinquency rates are picking up is household debt.
“And particularly, I’d say, for that auto and credit card component of household debt,” said Shannon Seery Grein, an economist at Wells Fargo. She said that’s because of rising interest rates.
“Auto loans, for instance, their delinquency rate is the highest since 2017 at this point, and that’s consistent with elevated rates, in terms of auto loans, being the highest in about a decade,” she said.
And those delinquencies are rising the most among younger consumers, people with lower incomes and people who have multiple types of debt.
“Households who have other debt, so student or auto loans for instance, are actually seeing delinquencies rise fastest in terms of their credit card purchases,” Grein said. She also said delinquencies usually rise when interest rates do.
And lenders have been preparing for an uptick.
Stephen Biggar, an analyst at Argus Research, said banks have been setting aside cash to cover bad loans, “thinking that the higher interest rate environment, what the Fed was doing to take the heat off of such high inflation, was going to result in a downturn and an uptick in unemployment.”
But there are still plenty of factors that are keeping a lid on delinquencies. Unemployment is still near record lows, for one. And a lot of people are sitting on really cheap mortgages from back when rates were low.
Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said that’s a big type of household debt that she’s not concerned about.
“The delinquency rate for mortgages is very low” she said. “So, those that are seriously delinquent, 90 days or more, it’s less than 1%. It’s 0.7.”
Bostjancic said delinquencies in general will probably rise more this year, as the economy continues to slow down.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll spike.
“If employment growth just moderates without having that harder landing, then delinquency rates will likely level off around where they are now,” she said.
And if inflation slows further and interest rates come down, Bostjancic said delinquencies might even fall.
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