New consumer bankruptcy cases were down by more than a fifth last month, while full-year filings are positioned to reach a seven-year low.
The number of new bankruptcy filings by both businesses and individuals amounted to a combined 62,403 during November.
Bankruptcies tumbled compared to a month earlier, when 78,977 filings were made. Filings also slid from November 2013 — a month that saw 74,070 total filings.
The American Bankruptcy Institute released the statistics Wednesday.
For the first 11 months of this year, the per capita filing rate was 2.97 filings per 1,000 in population.
Tennessee’s 6.22 per-capita rate was the highest in the nation. Alabama’s 5.34 rate was next, then 5.30 in Georgia, 4.93 in Utah and 4.72 in Illinois.
Noncommercial filings accounted for 60,155 of the latest total.
Consumer activity sank compared to October, when the number was 76,122. The total was revised down from 76,110 originally reported.
It was also substantially lower than a year earlier, when 70,985 noncommercial filings were made.
From Jan. 1 through Nov. 30 of this year, 814,877 new bankruptcy filings were made by consumers.
“Bankruptcies will continue to recede amidst tepid consumer spending, sustained low interest rates and high costs to file for both consumers and businesses,” ABI Executive Director Samuel J. Gerdano stated in the report. “We are on pace this year for bankruptcies to be well under 1 million filings, the lowest total since 2007.”
