US Marine Corps / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
Nearly one in four people with a credit bureau record had debt in collections in August 2026, according to an Urban Institute dashboard updated Tuesday. Among people with collections, the median amount was $2,913.
The national share was 23.5%, or about 24%, in the institute’s Debt in America dashboard, updated November 10. Those figures describe people with credit records, not all Americans, and the median is calculated only among those with debt in collections.
The institute’s national data show a 29.9% collections share in communities of color, with a median balance of $3,009 among people in those communities who had collections.
That comparison is based on neighborhoods, not the race of individual borrowers. Urban defines communities of color as ZIP codes where at least half the population is people of color. The credit bureau records themselves do not include race or ethnicity.
Collections are not the same as all late payments. Urban defines debt in collections to include past-due credit lines that creditors have closed and charged off, along with unpaid bills reported to the credit bureau that creditors are trying to collect.
Separately, 15.8% of student loan holders had loans that were at least 60 days past due or in default. That is a student-loan delinquency measure, not the share of all consumers with debt in collections.
Medical debt in collections appeared on the credit records of 3.0% of people with a credit bureau record. Urban cautions that changes in credit reporting and state restrictions have reduced the medical collections visible in credit files, without necessarily reducing the underlying share of people with unpaid medical debt in collections.
The technical appendix says the analysis uses a 4% nationally representative panel of deidentified records from a major credit bureau, covering more than 10 million consumers. The August 2026 credit data are combined with Census information for demographic and community comparisons.
JBizNews Desk | Economy & Business
© JBizNews.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is strictly prohibited.
