Democracy Dies in Darkness
Business

Credit card debt surges as inflation pushes Americans to borrow more

Compared with one year earlier, credit card debt has increased at the fastest clip in 20 years

By
Updated August 2, 2022 at 12:53 p.m. EDT|Published August 2, 2022 at 11:01 a.m. EDT
A shopper carries a Zara bag in the SoHo neighborhood of New York. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg News)
3 min

Credit card debt surged in the United States from April through June as Americans borrowed billions of dollars to continue spending in the face of growing inflation, according to a Tuesday report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Credit card balances increased $46 billion in the second quarter, a 5.5 percent increase from the first quarter, and there was also an uptick in new credit card accounts. The 13 percent increase from the second quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022 was the biggest such jump in more than 20 years.