For the second straight month, bankruptcy filings increased substantially over-the-month in March 2016, this time rising by 17.4 percent up to a total of 78,332 for the month, according to March 2016 AACER bankruptcy data reported by Epiq Systems on Thursday.
March’s over-the-month spike occurred one month after the number of filings rose by 24 percent from January to February. March 2016’s total of filings was 3,361 lower than March 2015’s total of 81,693.
Year-to-date, for the first three months of 2016, there have been 195,565 bankruptcy filings nationwide, a decline of about 5 percent from the total of 205,703 for the first three months of 2015. There were 231,839 filings for the first three months of 2014.
March 2016 did contain three more filings days than in February (23 compared to 20) but still would have had about 5,000 more filings than in February without those three extra days based on the average number of filings per day in March of 3,406. By comparison, there were 3,234 filings per day over 20 filing days in February and 2,766 filings per day over 19 filing days in January. So far in 2016, there have been 3,154 filings per day over 62 filing days in the first three months.
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California was the state with the most filings for the first three months of 2016 with 18,014. Illinois was second with 14,411, followed by Florida (11,616), which surpassed Georgia in March for the state with the third-most cumulative filings year-to-date in 2016. Georgia was fourth (11,392), and Ohio moved into fifth place (9,132) past Tennessee, which was sixth (8,978). The state with the fewest bankruptcy filings in for the first three months of 2016 was Alaska with 78.
Tennessee and Alabama continued to rank first and second among states in bankruptcy filings per capita for March with 5.70 and 5.45 for every 10,000 people, respectively. Those numbers represented increases from February’s total of 5.39 and 5.09 and January’s totals of 4.82 and 4.35, respectively. The national average of filings per capita in March 2016 increased over-the-month to 2.51, compared to 2.26 in February and 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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| JUSTIN LEE THAYER |