Consumer Credit Change

Consumer Credit (G.19) is the Federal Reserve monthly statistical release measuring outstanding borrowing for household, family, and personal spending, excluding real-estate-secured loans. It covers on-book lender receivables plus securitized pool balances, mostly still on originator balance sheets under accounting rules. It tracks lender-reported balances, not loan applications or borrower sentiment, with data back to January 1943. Private totals generally exclude charge-offs, while federal student-loan totals include defaulted loans.

Each release covers one calendar reference month and appears in the afternoon Eastern Time around the fifth business day of the second following month. That is about 5 weeks after the reference month ends, and the date moves with holidays and weekends.

The release publishes seasonally adjusted growth, flows, and levels alongside not-seasonally-adjusted levels and flows by holder. A loan-terms table shows bank rates, and a quarterly memo covers student loans and vehicle loans for personal-use light trucks in quarter-end months only.

The newest month is preliminary and older months are revised. Seasonal factors are re-estimated yearly before the September release on 120 months (10 years). A positive reading means expansion and a negative reading means contraction, with no official threshold.

The total splits into two credit types, and holder totals sum to the same total.

• Revolving: open-end borrowing up to a prearranged limit, repaid in installments, mostly credit-card loans plus overdraft plans.
• Nonrevolving: closed-end loans repaid on a fixed schedule, mostly auto and student loans plus boat, RV, and personal loans. A new loan needs a new contract.
• Depository institutions: commercial banks and savings institutions combined, the largest holder, tracked by weekly bank reports and quarterly censuses.
• Finance companies: non-bank lenders benchmarked to a 5-year census and tracked monthly through a company panel.
• Credit unions: member-owned lenders benchmarked to a mandatory census and tracked monthly through an industry indicator.
• Federal government and nonprofit institutions: student-loan holders only, covering federal Direct and Perkins loans and purchased support-program loans.

The June 5, 2020 release for April 2020 showed the split clearly. Total credit fell 19.6% at an annual rate, with revolving down 64.9% and nonrevolving down only 4.0%. Break-adjusted outflows ran at 825.4 billion dollars for total credit, with 699.8 billion from revolving and 125.5 billion from nonrevolving, at annual rates.

The May 7, 2020 release for March 2020 was starker, as revolving fell 30.9% while nonrevolving rose 6.2% and the total stood at minus 3.4%. The record plunge came almost entirely from cards, while auto and student loans held up.

1. Monthly estimates: each month keeps its estimate-to-indicator ratio near the prior month while hitting benchmarks at both ends. For example, an indicator rise from 500 to 510 scales a 1000 billion dollar benchmark to 1020 billion dollars until the next benchmark arrives.
2. Bank-week input: the bank indicator linearly interpolates between the last Wednesday of the reference month and the first Wednesday of the next month. For example, values of 2000 billion and 2014 billion dollars with 3 days elapsed give 2006 billion dollars.
3. Break-adjusted flows: not-seasonally-adjusted flow equals the level change minus any break. For example, levels of 1000 billion and 1021 billion dollars with a 1 billion dollar break give a 20 billion dollar flow.
4. Seasonal adjustment: X-12-ARIMA software removes seasonal factors estimated separately for revolving and nonrevolving, with factors summing to zero from January to December each year. The adjusted level adds each adjusted flow and any break to the prior adjusted level, matching unadjusted levels each December.
5. Growth rates: growth equals 100 times adjusted flow divided by the prior adjusted level, annualized by multiplying by 12. For example, 16 billion over 990 billion gives 1.62% for the month, about 19.4% annualized.