Since 2010, bankruptcy filings have been on a steady decline, for the most part. In February, however, the number of filings nationwide remained virtually unchanged year-over-year and shot up by nearly 24 percent over-the-month, according to February 2016 AACER bankruptcy data reported by Epiq Systems on Thursday.
Bankruptcy filings totaled 64,662 for February, only 402 lower than in February 2015 (a decline of less than 1 percent) but more than 12,000 higher than January 2016’s total (52,522), and February had only one more filing day than January (20, compared to 19).
February’s total brings the year-to-date amount of filings for 2016 up to 117,204, down from 124,052 reported for the first two months of 2015 and the combined total of 140,542 for January and February of 2014. The peak for any month of February occurred in 2010, when 117,989 filings were reported.
In February 2016, bankruptcy filings per day totaled 3,233 per day over 20 filing days, which was down slightly over-the-year from February 2015’s total of 3,421 filings per day. For the full year of 2015, filings totaled 3,264 per day over 251 filing days, for a cumulative total of 819,240 (an average of 68,270 per month). So far in 2016 in 39 filings days, filings have averaged 3,005 per day.
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California, the top state for cumulative bankruptcy filings in 2015, has the most filings year-to-date in 2016 with 10,908. Illinois was second with 8,812, followed by Georgia (7,747), Florida (7,142), and Tennessee (5,562), which surpassed Texas for the fifth spot on the list (5,517). The state with the fewest bankruptcy filings in January 2016 was Alaska with 48.
Tennessee and Alabama continued to rank first and second among states in bankruptcy filings per capita for February with 5.39 and 5.09 for every 10,000 people, respectively. Those numbers represented increases from January’s total of 4.82 and 4.35 for every 10,000 people, respectively. The national average of filings per capita in February 2016 increased over-the-month to 2.26, compared to 2.02 in January.
Epiq Systems is a leading global provider of technology-enabled solutions for electronic discovery, bankruptcy and class action administration. Top legal professionals depend on us for deep subject-matter expertise and years of firsthand experience working on many of the largest, most high-profile and complex client engagements. Epiq Systems, Inc. has locations in the United States, Europe and Asia
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