Consumer Credit Grows Less Than Expected On Subdued Credit Card Usage

While the monthly jobs report has become a veritable economic random number generator, with every monthly print coming either well below or above the forecast stack, the weekly initial claims report has become its foil - a study in boring reporting, with numbers barely budging week to week, and usually falling right on top of Wall Street estimates. A similar dynamic is emerging for the monthly consumer credit report: following a volatile 2025, when revolving credit swung around wildly in unexpected ways dragging the broader print with it, the last few months have been surprisingly steady, printing right around the consensus expectations with barely any volatility.

The latest, February, report published minutes ago by the Fed was no surprise: with expectations for a modest increase from last month's $8.05 billion to $10.25 billion, the reported number was just shy of the estimate, printing $9.484 billion, up from a downward revised $7.665 billion.

Revolving credit rose a modest $709 million - the weakest monthly increase since November - to $1.328 trillion, the highest since November 2024. 

Non-revolving credit (student and auto loans) rose a more substantial $9.2 billion to a record $3.789 trillion.

Broken down by its two core components, Student Loans were $1.838 trillion as of Dec 2025, up $5.4 billion for the quarter, while Auto Loans rose a modest $1.5 billion to $1.562 trillion.

Finally, and this may come as a surprise, following 1.75% in rate cuts by the Fed since September 2024, a move which did nothing for the average rates on credit card accounts through Dec 31, 2025, there was finally a notable drop in the average credit card interest rate, which dropped to 21.52% on March 31, 2026 down from 22.30% three months ago. It appears that all the noise surrounding exorbitant credit card rates in recent months is starting to have an impact.