Over the four quarters ending June 2026, 9.86% of student loan balances held by borrowers aged 50 and older moved into serious delinquency (90 or more days late), according to the New York Fed. For borrowers aged 18 to 29 it was 5.32%. For all ages it was 7.44%.
The rate rises with age: 6.49% for 30 to 39 and 8.05% for 40 to 49. All the rates are well below their recent peak in the four quarters ending December 2025, when 22.42% of balances of borrowers 50 and older moved into serious delinquency, and 16.19% for all ages.
Student loan balances moving into serious delinquency, by age
| Quarter | 18-29 | 30-39 | 40-49 | 50+ | All ages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2004 | 3.84% | 6.93% | 8.68% | 7.96% | 5.77% |
| Q2 2007 | 5.86% | 9.81% | 10.75% | 7.97% | 8.11% |
| Q2 2010 | 6.49% | 8.97% | 12.38% | 9.55% | 8.63% |
| Q2 2013 | 7.75% | 10.97% | 13.26% | 9.12% | 9.95% |
| Q4 2019 | 6.66% | 8.86% | 11.57% | 9.97% | 9.09% |
| Q4 2020 | 1.22% | 2.43% | 3.36% | 4.29% | 2.72% |
| Q4 2024 | 0.28% | 0.29% | 0.89% | 1.45% | 0.70% |
| Q1 2025 | 3.97% | 7.56% | 9.03% | 11.23% | 8.04% |
| Q2 2025 | 8.12% | 11.36% | 13.57% | 18.26% | 12.89% |
| Q3 2025 | 9.22% | 12.82% | 14.77% | 19.92% | 14.27% |
| Q4 2025 | 10.64% | 14.59% | 16.76% | 22.42% | 16.19% |
| Q1 2026 | 8.03% | 9.30% | 10.91% | 15.17% | 10.86% |
| Q2 2026 | 5.32% | 6.49% | 8.05% | 9.86% | 7.44% |
Percent of student loan balance. The CSV has every quarter the New York Fed publishes, from Q1 2000, but the New York Fed leaves student loans out of its other charts before 2004 because of uneven reporting, so treat the early years with caution.
What this counts
The New York Fed measures the share of student loan balances that were current or less than 90 days late and became 90 or more days late, as a four-quarter moving sum. It is a flow of newly delinquent balances, not the share of balances that are delinquent at one time, so it differs from the figures on our 90+ days late by loan type page. Age is the current year minus the borrower’s birth year, and the groups are redefined each year, so a group is not the same people over time. The data come from the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel, built from Equifax credit files.
Federal student loan delinquencies were not reported to the credit bureaus from 2020 until early 2025 because of the pandemic payment pause and the on-ramp period that followed, which is why the rates fall to very low levels in those years and then jump in 2025. A four-quarter sum also means a single quarter with a large wave of new delinquencies stays in the figure for a year. The share of student loan balances already 90 or more days late kept rising, to 10.6% in Q2 2026, according to the same report; this page measures only new delinquencies. The figures include federal and private student loans.
Source
New York Fed Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, 2026 Q2 (released August 2026), underlying data page 28, from the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel / Equifax. We pulled the workbook on October 16, 2026.
© 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Content from the New York Fed subject to the Terms of Use at newyorkfed.org.
The New York Fed does not endorse this page, My Credit Guide, or any use of these figures. We have not changed the source figures. Anything labelled as a rank, a change, or a comparison is our calculation.
Our table is available under CC BY 4.0. Credit "My Credit Guide (mycreditguide.org)".
Steven Reynolds, "Student Loan Delinquency by Age," My Credit Guide, October 16, 2026, https://mycreditguide.org/data/student-loan-delinquency-by-age/.