On both a month-over-month basis and a year-over-year basis, the number of consumers who resorted to the bankruptcy courts last month moved lower.
U.S. bankruptcy filings, including commercial and consumer activity, that were made during all of May came to 67,307 new cases.
Activity eased compared to the preceding month, when an upwardly revised 69,760 new bankruptcies were filed. In the same month last year, there were an upwardly revised 69,732 filings.
The numbers were reported Wednesday by the American Bankruptcy Institute.
Last month’s filings brought the per-capita rate to 2.51 total bankruptcy filings per thousand in population.
The per-capita rate in Alabama was 5.67 — the highest of all states. Next was Tennessee’s 5.48, then Georgia’s 4.49, Mississippi’s 4.36 and Illinois’ 3.87.
Zeroing in on just consumer activity, there were 63,982 non-commercial bankruptcy filings last month, falling from 66,510 in April.
Consumer filings also fell from May 2017, when the total came to a downwardly revised 66,057.
From Jan. 1 through May 31 of this year, 308,499 consumer bankruptcies were filed.
