U.S. Household Debt: A Rising Tide

According to the New York Fed’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, total household debt in the United States grew by $197 billion in the third quarter of 2025, bringing the total debt balance to an all-time high of $18.6 trillion. The increase was mainly driven by mortgage, credit card and student loan balances, which grew by $137, $24 and $15 billion, respectively, with HELOC loans and credit card debt growing the fastest in relative terms at 2.7 and 2.0 percent compared to the previous quarter and 9.0 and 5.7 percent year-over-year, respectively.

Despite the high level of debt, overall delinquency rates remain relatively low, though slightly higher than the historic lows seen during the pandemic, when consumers were flush with cash from government checks. Looking at total consumer debt, 95.5 percent of the total balance was current or non-delinquent (i.e. all payments made on time or less than 30 days late) at the end of Q3 2025, up from less than 90 percent in the midst of the financial crisis, but down from a post-pandemic high of 97.5 in Q4 2022.

Looking back to pre-pandemic debt levels, household debt grew $4.4 trillion since the end of 2019, mainly driven by a $3.5 trillion increase in mortgage debt. In 2020 and 2021, many households took advantage of historically low rates to refinance their mortgage and even take out some cash in the process. According to the New York Fed, 14 million mortgages were refinanced during the pandemic refinancing boom, during which home owners extracted $430 billion through cash-out refinances. As a result, mortgages accounted for 79 percent of the increase in total consumer debt since Q4 2019, followed by auto loans and credit card debt, which both accounted for 9 percent of the $4.4-trillion increase.