Filings in the bankruptcy courts increased modestly throughout 2024, Docket Alarm data shows. The data, which combines bankruptcy filings from all chapters, shows decreases in a handful of districts, a sharp increase in the Southern District of New York, and a general pattern of bankruptcy filing growth nationwide of around 15 to 25 percent.
The districts where bankruptcy filings decreased are the Western District of Missouri, the Southern District of Georgia, and the District of Alaska. The greatest decrease was in Western Missouri, home to part of the Kansas City metropolitan area as well as cities like Joplin, Jefferson City, and Springfield, with a decrease of 13 percent.
The Southern District of Georgia, based in Savannah, saw a decrease of 8.75 percent, The District of Alaska saw a decrease of 2.67 percent.
The largest increase was in the Southern District of New York, based in Manhattan, with an increase of 80 percent. However, diving deeper into the data reveals an anomaly - over 3,000 suits were filed in July 2024 alone in that district, in contrast to an average of around 500. Many of these cases relate to the bankruptcy proceedings of Celsius, a cryptocurrency company that itself filed for bankruptcy in 2022. These cases, which vary heavily from case to case, at least partially explain the massive increase in filings in New York.
Beyond these isolated changes, bankruptcy filings generally rose over the course of the year. This could be the result of prevailing economic conditions, including the residual effects of high inflation and elevated housing prices. While there is not a clear regional pattern, bankruptcy filings tend seem to have increased by a larger amount in more populous and urbanized states like New York, Florida, Texas, and California. Washington state, and Colorado, These states generally saw increases of around 20 to 30 percent, in contrast to rural regions such as the South and the Great Plains, which generally saw increases of under 10 percent.
