Last year, there were fewer consumer bankruptcies filed than in any year during the last decade. Monthly filings, though, rose from a year earlier.
A combined 56,394 new commercial and non-commercial cases were filed with the nation’s bankruptcy courts during the final month of last year.
The figure fell from November, when the total was 59,300, but rose from December 2015, when the number came to an upwardly revised 53,844.
The statistics were reported Thursday by the American Bankruptcy Institute, a
12,000-member trade group.
For all of last year, there were
2.48 bankruptcy filings per thousand in U.S. population, down from 2.63 in 2015.
The 2016 per-capita rate was highest in Tennessee at 5.57. Alabama’s 5.48 per-capita rate followed, then 4.75 in Georgia, 4.09 in Utah and 4.08 in Illinois.
Non-commercial bankruptcy filings accounted for 53,483 of the December 2016 U.S. total.
Consumer bankruptcies fell from 56,392 a month earlier. But the total worsened from a downwardly revised 51,170 a year earlier.
For all of 2016, non-commercial filings amounted to 733,897 — the fewest since 2006, when there were a previously reported 573,203 bankruptcies.
Last year’s total improved from 789,332 during 2015.
