Nearly one in four Americans with a credit record, 23.5%, has debt in collections, according to the Urban Institute's Debt in America map, updated Nov. 10 with August 2026 credit bureau data. Among those people, the median amount in collections is $2,913.
The share ranges from 34.7% of people with a credit file in Louisiana to 13.6% in Minnesota.
The map counts two kinds of debt as being in collections: past-due credit lines that the lender has closed and written off, and unpaid bills that a creditor reports to a credit bureau and is trying to collect. A credit card account reaches that stage after 180 days past due.
The states with the most and least
| State | Share with debt in collections | Median amount |
|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | 34.7% | $2,715 |
| Texas | 33.8% | $3,053 |
| Georgia | 32.8% | $3,089 |
| Mississippi | 31.5% | $2,479 |
| Florida | 26.1% | $3,510 |
| New York | 18.8% | $3,058 |
| California | 17.9% | $3,480 |
| Minnesota | 13.6% | $2,684 |
In zip codes where most residents are people of color, 29.9% of people have debt in collections, compared with 20.0% in mostly white zip codes, the data shows.
Medical bills, student loans and cars
Nationally, 3.0% of people have medical debt in collections on their credit reports. In California, New York and Illinois the figure shows as zero. Those are 3 of the 15 states, plus Washington, D.C., that Urban lists as having laws that further limit reporting medical debt to credit bureaus. The map's notes say the industry's own changes since 2022 cut how much medical debt appears on credit reports, but not necessarily how much people owe.
Among people with student loans, 15.8% are delinquent or in default, rising to 22.0% in Louisiana and 21.2% in Arkansas. For auto loans and retail installment loans, such as financing a couch through a furniture store, the delinquency rate is 5.5%. On credit cards it is 5.8%.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's third-quarter household debt report, which uses a different credit panel, found 5.0% of all outstanding household debt was in some stage of delinquency at the end of September, up 0.3 percentage points from the previous quarter. The share of student loan balances at least 90 days past due rose to 10.9%, from 10.6%.
Total household debt reached $19.1 trillion, up $5 trillion since the end of 2019, the report says.
