2025 Credit Card Debt Statistics

Americans have an absolute mountain of credit card debt — $1.182 trillion, to be exact.

This credit card debt statistics page tracks Americans’ credit card use each month. We update this page regularly, looking at how much debt people have, how often they carry a balance month to month, how often they pay their credit card bills late and more.

How much credit card debt do Americans have?

It isn’t unusual for credit card debt to dip in Q1. That’s happened in all but three years — 2000, 2001 and 2023 — since the report began in 1999. However, no one should expect this to be the part of a new downward trend for credit card debt. The last time we saw card debt decrease in Q2 of a year was 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing. Prior to that, it hadn’t happened since 2012.

Even with this quarter’s decrease, credit card balances have risen by $412 billion since Q1 2021, when credit card debt bottomed out at $770 billion during the pandemic. That’s a 54% increase in four years. Americans’ credit card debt is $255 billion higher than the pre-pandemic record set in Q4 2019, when balances stood at $927 billion. (That’s a 28% increase.) However, thanks to still-sky-high interest rates, stubborn inflation and myriad other economic factors, credit card balances are likely only going to climb.

These record balances are light years above the $478 billion seen more than 20 years ago in Q1 1999.

Card debt showed hockey-stick growth until the financial collapse in 2008, when balances fell from $866 billion in Q4 2008 to $660 billion in Q1 2013. But, as you can see in the chart below, the hockey stick returned.

Then, when the pandemic took hold in 2020, credit card balances plunged again — from $927 billion in Q4 2019 to $770 billion in Q1 2021. But — again — the hockey stick returned, thanks to a massive spike in Q4 2021.

Which states’ residents have the most credit card debt?

Credit cardholders in New Jersey have the highest average credit card debt of any state, according to LendingTree data, while those in Mississippi have the lowest.

Source: LendingTree analysis of the anonymized credit reports of more than 350,000 LendingTree users in Q1 2024 and more than 400,000 in Q1 2025. Note: The rank is based on the average credit card debt in Q1 2025.

LendingTree analysts reviewed anonymized credit report data from Q1 2025 for more than 400,000 LendingTree users to calculate these averages and create a list of states with the most debt. We also compared that data to what we found in our Q1 2024 analysis of more than 350,000 reports.

Six states spread throughout the nation have average balances of at least $9,000. New Jersey leads at $9,382, ahead of Maryland ($9,252) and Connecticut ($9,201). Massachusetts, California and Florida aren’t far behind.

The seven states with the lowest balances are in the South. Mississippi’s balance is $5,221, slightly lower than Kentucky ($5,237) and Arkansas ($5,245).

Georgia has the fastest-growing card debt in the period analyzed. That state’s average card balance grew a troubling 20.5% from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025, rising from $6,592 to $7,943. A dozen other states saw double-digit increases, led by Oklahoma (up 14.9%) and Massachusetts and the District of Columbia (both up 13.3%).

Meanwhile, Louisiana saw the biggest year-over-year debt decrease, with its residents’ debt falling 8.4% from $5,835 to $5,342. In all, 11 states saw credit card balances decrease in the past year. North Dakota (down 5.7%) and Iowa (down 5.2%) joined Louisiana as the only states to see decreases of at least 5.0%.

What percentage of credit cardholders carry a balance?

Fewer than half of adult credit cardholders (47%) carried a balance on a credit card for at least one month in the past year, according to a May 2024 Federal Reserve study.

Job No. 1 for anyone with a credit card is to pay off that balance in full at the end of each month. But we all know that life happens, and that means that it’s not always possible to pay off your credit cards each month.

Federal Reserve data showed that fewer than half (47%) of credit cardholders carried a balance at some point in 2023. That’s down a percentage point from 2021 and 2022 but is down even further from 2020, when that rate was 50%.

What’s the average interest rate on people’s credit cards? What about those who carry a balance? What about new credit card offers?

For all credit cards, the average APR in Q1 2025 was 21.37%.

For cards accruing interest, the average in Q1 2025 was 21.91%.

For new credit card offers, the average today is 24.28%, the highest since December, after a second straight monthly increase.

Sources: Federal Reserve, LendingTree data

The Federal Reserve’s G.19 consumer credit report showed that the average APRs for cards accruing interest fell to 21.91% in Q1 2025, down from 22.80% in Q4 2024. Meanwhile, APRs for all current credit card accounts fell to 21.37% in Q1 2025, down from 21.47% in Q4 2024. Both of these averages had been at record highs in Q3 2024. The Q1 2025 numbers mark the second straight quarterly decline.

May is the second straight month in which rates increased, ending a six-month run of decreases on the heels of the Fed’s September meeting in which it announced it would reduce rates for the first time since March 2020. The Fed also cut rates at its November and December meetings. The Fed left rates unchanged at its January, March and May 2025 meetings, but most observers expect rate cuts to resume sometime later this year — possibly as early as its next meeting in June.

That’s far from guaranteed, however, especially given all the uncertainty in the economy today. Regardless, credit cardholders should expect rates to stay high for the foreseeable future. After all, even if the Fed were to step on the gas again with cuts, rates wouldn’t go from awful to awesome overnight.

And as the chart below shows, the rate you’re offered can also vary widely based on the type of card for which you apply.

Average APRs by category

Source: LendingTree review of publicly available terms and conditions for about 220 U.S. credit cards.

Of course, your best move is to make those interest rates a moot point by paying your card debt in full, but that’s often easier said than done.

How many Americans are currently delinquent with their credit card payments?

Just 3.08% of Americans’ total outstanding credit card balances are currently at least 30 days delinquent.

According to the most recent delinquency data from the Fed, the 30-day delinquency rate (or the percentage of total outstanding credit card balances currently at least 30 days overdue) dipped significantly, from 3.20% in Q3 2024 to 3.08% in Q3. The 0.12 percentage point drop is the biggest since Q2 2021, which saw a 0.29 percentage point fall.

This is also the second drop after 11 straight quarters of increases. During that period, delinquency rates rose to the highest levels seen since Q4 2011, when rates hit 3.25%. However, delinquency rates are still near historic lows. The average delinquency rate since the Fed began tracking in 1991 is 3.72%, while the average since 2000 is 3.45%.

Today’s numbers are also vastly different from what we saw during the Great Recession, when delinquencies peaked at nearly 7% in 2009 and stayed above 5% for nearly two years.