this post authored by Juan Sflnchez, Assistant Vice President and Economist; and Olivia Wilkinson, Research Associate
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, total credit card debt1 in the United States dropped 13%, reaching a low of $807 billion by the end of third quarter of 2020. Prior to this decline, total credit card debt had reached a record high of nearly $930 billion. Using aggregate credit card debt data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the figure below shows the deleveraging pattern of the last two recessions, the Great Recession and the COVID-19 downturn.
This blog post uses individual level data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel to show that although the evolution of credit card debt looks similar at the aggregate level during these two episodes, the underlying individual changes in credit card debt during these two events are quite different.