In a harsh indictment of how inflation under President Joe Biden is crippling Americans, credit card debt is soaring as consumers are faced with skyrocketing prices.
Economic figures from August offer compelling evidence of the surge in credit card debt. Revolving credit that month shot up a massive 18.1% while total consumer debt zoomed to a record $4.68 trillion, as data from the Federal Reserve Board revealed.
“Americans are burning up their plastic in order to make ends meet in these inflationary times,” declared journalist Michael Maharrey.
More evidence from the August data: revolving credit climbed another $17.1 billion in August. “Total revolving debt now stands at $1.154 trillion — well above the pre-pandemic record,” Maharrey noted.
A CreditCards.com report stated 60% of credit-card debtors acknowledged suffering from credit card debt for 12 months or longer; last year that figure stood at 50%.
“Total consumer borrowing has averaged a gain of $31.2 billion in the first eight months of the year,” MarketWatch reported last week. “Some experts are alarmed at the pace of growth in consumer credit and think that households are using expensive debt to keep spending with inflation so elevated.”
In mid-September CBS News reported, “Consumer prices have surged 8.3% in the past 12 months.”
Noting the $887 billion in credit card debt Americans owed as of June 2022, Ron Hetrick, senior economist at Lightcast, pointed out that number exceeded the same time the year before by 13%, calling it “the largest increase in credit card debt that we’ve seen in over 20 years.”
Meanwhile, the Fed has been trying to reduce inflation by implementing a series of interest rate increases over the last six months. In September they raised interest rates by three-fourths of a percentage point, from 3% to 3.25%. A hike in the Fed’s interest rate usually means a hike in the interest rate for credit cards, thus an unpaid balance will cost consumers even more.
A July report from Morgan Stanley said that one-quarter of Americans were cutting down on paying off their debt because of high inflation. The report also stated that 62% of U.S. employees admitted they reduced contributions to their savings because of rampant inflation while a whopping 71% of U.S. employees said financial stress was negatively affecting their work and personal life, up 7% from the year before.
A previous version of this article incorrectly said Ron Hetrick is a senior economist at Lightcast Americans. He is a senior economist at Lightcast.