Last month, there were fewer consumers that resorted to bankruptcy — with new case activity slowing both on a month-over-month and year-over-year basis.
In April, there were 70,457 new cases filed in U.S. bankruptcy courts by businesses and consumers. The total tumbled from 78,344 cases the previous month.
The number of bankruptcy filings additionally declined compared to the same month last year, when bankruptcy courts were hit with 77,949 new filings.
The 12,000-member American Bankruptcy Institute provided the data Tuesday.
As of last month, the per-capita bankruptcy-filing rate was 2.56 filings per 1,000 in population.
Maintaining its tight grip as the state with the worst per-capita rate was Tennessee, where there were 5.66 filings per thousand in population during April.
Next was Alabama’s 5.39 per-capita rate, then 4.62 in Georgia,
4.45 in Illinois and 4.00 in Utah.
Total non-commercial bankruptcy filings came in at 66,975 last month.
Consumer bankruptcies tumbled from a downwardly revised 74,975 in March and an upwardly revised 75,308 in April 2015.
Non-commercial bankruptcy filings amounted to 253,329 during the first-four months of 2016.
