More U.S. consumers resorted to bankruptcy last month, with new non-commercial filings climbing to the highest level in four months.
During August, there were 68,495 new bankruptcies that were filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Courts by both consumers and businesses.
Filings swelled from
upwardly revised 61,340 filings the previous month and the upwardly revised 67,777 filings made a year previous.
The 12,000-member American Bankruptcy Institute reported the data Wednesday.
Last month’s per-capita rate was 2.55 filings per thousand people,
edging up from 2.53 in July.
In Tennessee, the per-capita rate was 5.63 — the highest of any state.
After that was Alabama’s 5.45, then Georgia’s 4.69, Illinois’ 4.23 and Utah’s 4.17.
Included in the overall bankruptcy total for the most-recent month were 65,296 non-commercial filings.
That was the most filings since April, when there were a downwardly revised 66,957 consumer bankruptcies filed.
Consumer bankruptcies worsened from an downwardly revised 58,385
during July and an upwardly revised 65,286 in August 2015.
From Jan. 1 through Aug. 31 of this year, there have been a total of 502,720 non-commercial bankruptcies filed.
