Auto Loans 90+ Days Past Due

The New York Fed's Household Debt and Credit Report put the share of auto loan and lease balances 90 or more days late at 5.49% in Q2 2026, up from 4.99% a year earlier. The share fell from 5.6% in Q1 2026, but the series is not seasonally adjusted, so a one-quarter move is partly seasonal.

The share has been higher than a year earlier for 12 quarters in a row. In Q4 2010, after the Great Recession, the share was 5.27%.

This is a share of balances, not of people. It covers auto loans and leases on the Equifax credit reports of people with a credit report and a Social Security number, from a New York Fed sample. A balance counts once it is 90 or more days late, sent to a collector, or marked severely derogatory: repossessed or charged off, even when the lender keeps reporting it. So the share is a stock of old and new late debt. The report's separate transition rate tracks balances that newly became 90 days late.

In 2020 the New York Fed said accounts in a payment pause, or forbearance, typically showed as current on credit reports, and it linked lower rates of auto loans going late to government stimulus and lender forbearance. Readings from 2020 through 2022 partly reflect those programs. The series is not seasonally adjusted; in most years the share dips from the first quarter to the second.

Other measures of late auto debt count borrowers or loans instead of balances, use a 60-day line, or leave out charged-off debt, so their numbers differ from this one. The total delinquency rate tracks late payments across all household debt, and the average card interest rate tracks what credit card borrowing costs.