Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy Filings Dip Slightly in April

By Bob Lawless

April 2009 bankruptcy filings dipped slightly from March. The 2.2% decline keeps the calendar year 2009 in line with recent historical patterns of heavy filing increases in the first part of the year followed by no changes or slight declines for the summer and fall months. The bottom line is that the latest numbers continue to indicate a filing rate well above 1.4 million filings for the year and perhaps close to 1.5 million filings.

As always, the good folks at AACER have provided the April filing data, and they report 128,720 filings for the month of April. Spread over the 22 business days in April, that is 5,851 filings per day. Although the month-over-month data show a 2.2% decline, the April 2009 filing rate is 38.1% higher than the filing rate in April 2009.

Using the data we have so far in 2009, we can make some predictions about the rest of the calendar year. The United States will see:

• 1,366,000 filings if bankruptcy filings continue for the rest of the year at the same daily rate (5,462 per day) as they have averaged for the first four months of 2009
• 1,430,000 filings if bankruptcy filings continue at the same daily rate (5,851 per day) as they have averaged for April
  
• 1,490,000 filings if bankruptcy filings for the remaining eight months of 2009 constitute the same proportion of total filings as the last eight months of 2008 constituted for total filings that year (about 69.6%)

Full post as published by Credit Slips on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).