By Howard Schneider
WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) – U.S. consumers took out a record amount in auto loans in the second quarter and boosted their credit card and home equity balances as well, the New York Fed said in its latest household debt and credit report on Tuesday.
Though overall consumer debt fell slightly to $18.8 trillion in the April-June period, the decline was linked to a change in how mortgage data is reported, with a decline in mortgage debt in the second quarter expected to be offset by a similar jump in the next report.
The $19 billion rise in home equity loans is part of a now four-year trend that Fed researchers see as part of a substitution among older homeowners who want to avoid the current high mortgage rates that would be associated with a full refinancing.
The $211 billion in auto loan originations was a record, but only in nominal, not inflation-adjusted terms. A surge of auto purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 also led to quarterly auto borrowing of around $200 billion, but also pushed up prices.
The overall delinquency rate fell in the second quarter in a sign that household balance sheets on average remain resilient despite a decline in inflation-adjusted incomes.
In a blog post accompanying the New York Fed’s report, staff economists said credit card delinquency rates in particular, while still elevated compared to the period before the pandemic, appear to have stabilized.
An increase in the share of credit card debt more than 90 days past due, from 7.6% in late 2022 to 12.8% at the start of this year, prompted concerns about deteriorating household finances. But a closer look at the data, the researchers said, shows the pace at which households were falling behind has been unchanged for around two years.
The rise in the overall share of delinquent credit card debt, they found, was because lenders were keeping “stale, charged-off debts” on their books for longer, rather than because of “a fundamental worsening in the incidence of delinquency.”
“When the question is ‘how are households doing right now?’… the pace of credit card delinquency is elevated but has been largely stable since 2024,” with about 7% of balances flowing into delinquency from one quarter to the next, the researchers concluded.
Overall delinquency on all forms of credit fell slightly in the quarter, to 4.7% of outstanding balances versus 4.8% in the prior quarter.
CREDIT CARD SPENDING STILL SOLID, ANALYSIS SHOWS
The New York Fed report adds more detail to what has been a puzzle for U.S. central bank policymakers and economists who have wondered when the fact that prices are rising faster than incomes will translate into more obvious signs of stress — either a blow to consumption or an outsized rise in debt and delinquency.
Personal consumption spending jumped 3.2% in the second quarter, a fast rebound from tepid first quarter growth that helped keep overall economic growth from slowing even further than it did, to a 1.5% annual pace from 2.1% in the prior quarter.
In a new Bank of America Institute analysis of July data, credit card spending excluding gas was found to have risen “a solid 4.3%,” even as the temporary boost from things like the FIFA World Cup started to fade.
There was even evidence of “convergence” of spending rates across income groups and a lessening of the economy’s “K-shaped” dynamics.
“Consumer financial health looks solid. Despite cost-of-living pressures from areas such as gasoline, the share of households paying off their credit card bills in full each month has risen. And there is little sign of an acceleration in households drawing upon their savings,” a recent analysis by the institute concluded.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Paul Simao)
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