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Nationwide bankruptcy filings experienced their second straight month of decline in May after two increases of more than 20 percent each in February and March, according to May 2016 AACER bankruptcy data reported by Epiq Systems.
Bankruptcy filings totaled 66,094 in May 2016, which is lower than April’s total (70,457) by close to 4,400 and lower than May 2015’s total (69,338) by 3,244. May 2016’s total was more than 12,000 less than March’s total of 78,332.
There have been 332,173 bankruptcy filings nationwide in the first five months of 2016, a decline of about 6 percent over-the-year from May 2015's year-to-date total of 352,925. The total number of filings for the first five months of 2014 was 405,713.
May 2016’s total of 66,094 bankruptcy filings was less than half of the peak total for the month of May recorded in 2010 (133,648).
The average number of filings per day in May 2016 was 3,147 over 21 days, which is a decline from April’s daily average of 3,356 over the same number of days. Bankruptcy filings have averaged 3,194 for the first five months of 2016 over a period of 104 filing days.
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The state with the most cumulative filings for the first five months of 2016 was again California with 30,846 after adding about 6,300 more in May. As has been the trend, Illinois was second in year-to-date filings with 23,441, after adding another 4,300 in May. The same three states ranked third through fifth in May as they did in April: Florida (19,397), Georgia (18,675), and Ohio (15,757).
Tennessee and Alabama continued to rank first and second among states in bankruptcy filings per capita for May with 5.64 and 5.36 for every 10,000 people, respectively. Those numbers represented slight declines from April’s total of 5.66 and 5.49, respectively. The national average of filings per capita in May 2016 held steady over-the-month at 2.56, though it has increased by more than 50 basis points since January 2016’s average of 2.02 percent.
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.
