American families have assumed $17.7 trillion of total household debt as of the first quarter of 2024, a trend driven by elevated housing prices and overall inflationary pressures.

Total household debt increased by $184 billion at the end of last year, according to data released on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with mortgage balances rising $190 billion and automotive debt rising $9 billion. The balances for student loans were the only category of household debt which remained stable, while credit card debt slightly declined.

Yet the central bank noted that nearly 9% of credit card balances and 8% of automotive loans “transitioned into delinquency.” Joelle Scally, a regional economic principal at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a statement that “an increasing number of borrowers missed credit card payments, revealing worsening financial distress among some households.”

Economists noted in an analysis that credit card debt balances are well above the levels seen before the lockdown-induced recession: higher credit card utilization rates, referring to the share of available credit consumers utilize, are linked to higher levels of delinquency, since consumers who employ a greater share of their credit are more likely to be in a “tight cash-flow situation.”

“The share of maxed-out borrowers has been increasing from pandemic lows and is approaching pre-pandemic levels, and the delinquency transition rates of these maxed-out borrowers are now noticeably higher than pre-pandemic, resulting in higher transition rates into credit card delinquency overall,” the analysis observed.

Increasingly expensive real estate markets have also contributed to rising obligations: debt related to housing now amounts to $12.8 trillion and over 72% of the entire household debt burden, an uptick from the 70% of debt which real estate constituted before the lockdowns.

The housing market had already been constrained by low home inventory ahead of the lockdown-induced recession, but the lockdowns caused supply chain bottlenecks and worker shortages which exacerbated the crisis. Increased mortgage rates have diminished affordability as the Federal Reserve seeks to restrain the record inflation which followed the lockdowns.