The good folks at AACER have again
been kind enough to send along monthly U.S. bankruptcy filing
statistics for October. They always tell me not to worry about giving
them credit, but their statistics are more timely than what we get from
the U.S. courts. They deserve the credit.

This means it’s time to update the 2007 bankruptcy watch. October 2007 saw 81,065 total bankruptcy filings as compared to only 67,542
filings for September. That difference is deceiving, however, because
there were 22 filing days (i.e., days the U.S. courts were open for
business) in October as compared to only 19 in  September. On a daily basis,
October had 3,685 filings per day as compared to 3,550 in September, a
3.7% increase. With only two months of filing left, we can expect the following for annual 2007 filings:

• 820,000 if filings continue through the end of 2007 at the same daily rate they have averaged for all of 2007
• 838,000 if filings continue through the end of 2007 at the same daily rate they were in October 2007
• 846,000 if filings after October 2007 represent the same proportion of filings (about 18.9%) as the filings after October 2006 represented of the total 2006 figures

I wanted to get the updated figures posted. Soon, I’ll post some comments on the monthly trend we have seen since January 2006.