The number of new bankruptcy filings that were made last month by consumers descended to the lowest level during the last three months.
U.S. bankruptcy courts handled 66,094 new cases during May 2016, fewer than the upwardly revised 70,472 filings during the prior month.
Commercial and non-commercial filings were also down from the same month last year, when an upwardly revised 69,338 cases were filed.
The statistics were provided by the American Bankruptcy Institute,
a more than 12,000-member organization.
The report indicated that the per-capita rate last month was 2.56 filings per thousand in U.S. population,
the same as in April 2016.
Tennessee’s per-capital rate was 5.64, the worst in the country. Next was 5.36 in Alabama, then 4.56 in Georgia, 4.36 in Illinois and 4.09 in Utah.
Included in the latest monthly total filings were 62,736 non-commercial bankruptcy filings.
It was the slowest month for non-commercial filings since February, when the total was a downwardly revised 61,651.
Consumer activity slowed from a downwardly revised 66,957 during April and an upwardly revised 66,788 in May 2015.
From Jan. 1 through May 31 of this year, non-commercial bankruptcy filings came to 316,047.
