Bankruptcy

August Filings Hold Steady

By Bob Lawless

It is September 8, and I never did my monthly post about the latest U.S. bankruptcy filing figures. Hopefully, late is better than never. According to data from Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER), there were slightly more than 124,000 bankruptcy filings in August. Spread over the twenty-one business days in August, there were 5,914 filings per day. That represents a negligible 0.6 decline from the July rate of 5,948 filings per day.

The bankruptcy filing rate has moved sideways since March when the filing rate was 6,000 filings per day. Since then, May and July showed increases, while April, June, and now August showed declines. The gains have offset the declines such that we are only 1.4% lower than the bankruptcy filing rate in March. None of this is out of the ordinary. In recent years, the bankruptcy filing rate holds steady over the summer months. The real indication of whether we have reached a new equilibrium in bankruptcy filings rates will come in the winter and then especially again after the start of the new year.

In terms of projections and with only four months left in the year, it looks like the U.S. will not go over 1.5 million bankruptcy filings for the 2009 calendar year. The projections now look like the final number will be somewhere between 1.45 and 1.50 million bankruptcy filings. For the record, 2009 bankruptcy filings will be:

• 1,426,000 filings if bankruptcy filings continue for the rest of the year at the same daily rate (5,684 per day) as they have averaged for the first eight months of 2009
• 1,449,000 filings if bankruptcy filings continue at the same daily rate (5,914 per day) as they averaged for August
  
• 1,488,000 filings if bankruptcy filings for the remaining four months of 2009 constitute the same proportion of total filings as the last four months of 2008 constituted for total filings that year (about 35.8%)

Full post as published by Credit Slips on September 08, 2009 (boomark / email).