Estimated Real Debt Payments Rise 14.8% as Real Household Income Gains 1.7%

Consumer debt payments outpaced estimated real household income from late 2022 to early 2026, with a modeled one-earner case seeing about 52 cents of each income-growth dollar absorbed by higher monthly bills.

Estimated real after-tax household income increased about $109 a month, while required payments rose $57. The comparison runs from the end of 2022 to a four-quarter average ending in March 2026. It measures higher payments against estimated income growth, not the share of total income spent on debt.

Estimated real debt payments rose 14.8% over the period, compared with 1.7% growth in estimated real household income. In a two-earner illustration, each person is assumed to have the average payment increase, bringing the combined monthly increase to about $114 against the household’s estimated $109 income gain.

The estimates do not match each person’s payments to their paycheck. The credit panel covers U.S. adults ages 25 to 64 with credit records, while household income is estimated using census-tract and demographic data. The credit-file data are estimated to cover 85% to 90% of household debt service.

The estimate counts credit cards, auto financing and leases, student loans, and home equity lines of credit; mortgages are excluded. Missing obligations include medical payment plans, many buy-now-pay-later loans and some personal loans.

For roughly 80% of working-age adults with consumer debt, required monthly payments were about 10% of estimated after-tax household income, up from 8.9% at the end of 2022. Credit cards made up 44.4% of estimated monthly payments and auto loans 39.9%; the median auto-loan payment was $471.

The share of families whose debt payments exceeded 40% of income reached 8.6% in 2025, up from 6.5% in 2022, a level last seen in 2013. Families with any debt remained at about 77%, while median and mean debt balances were unchanged from 2022. These figures use different populations and income measures from the modeled estimate above, so they are not directly comparable.

Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at The Century Foundation, said, “Debt is quietly eroding workers’ power.”