Residential Utility Service Disconnections

Utility shutoff is one of the earliest and most common forms of household distress. It precedes eviction. It precedes bankruptcy. It often precedes a missed rent or mortgage payment — households triage by paying the creditor most likely to act quickly, and utilities are usually near the front of the line.

Until April 2026 there was no consistent federal series for this signal. The Energy Information Administration's Form EIA-112 — approved by OMB in October 2024 and collected from natural gas and electric utilities for the first time across the 2024 calendar year — closes the gap. The first annual report lands a state-by-state monthly count of residential disconnections for nonpayment, separately for gas and electric service.

The 2024 national total: 15,098,448 residential gas and electric service shutoffs for nonpayment. State public service commissions had published partial data in inconsistent formats for years; LIHEAP releases aggregate assistance figures, not shutoff counts. None of that was directly comparable. The EIA-112 series is the first federal number that lets us measure how often U.S. households lose their lights or heat for not paying the bill.

The signal sits adjacent to the rest of the distress picture. When Credit Card Delinquency climbs, when Foreclosure Starts rise, households are typically triaging cash flow first — and utilities are usually one of the first bills skipped. Now we can see how often that triage ended in a shutoff.