Federal bankruptcy filings were down nationally by just over 2 percent for the year ending in September, even as the Second Circuit managed to buck the trend.

According to data provided by the federal court system, both business and nonbusiness bankruptcy filings were down, following a multiyear trend. The total of 773,375 filings during the year ending Sept. 30 was down 2.2 percent from the prior 12-month period. Overall, filings have dropped nearly 20 percent since the 2014 total of 963,739.

As court officials noted, this represents a continuation of the trend since the peak filings of 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis of the last decade. The most recent bankruptcy filings were the lowest of any 12-month period since the year ending June 2007, the officials said.

While the national trend has remained downward, the courts of the Second Circuit have shown a more mixed result. The Second Circuit saw a 6.1 percent increase in overall filings over the same time period. This was led by a double-digit increase in filings from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Filings in Brooklyn were up 13.4 percent, which was the third-highest increase by percentage in the nation. Additionally, the jump from 14,240 filings in 2017 to 16,144 in 2018 represented the largest increase by volume of any district in the country.

The filings in Brooklyn have also lagged behind the national trend since the height of filings in September 2010. While overall filings have dropped by more than 50 percent since then, from nearly 1.6 million to the totals released by the court system today, Brooklyn's filings have dropped by only 29.2 percent over the same time period.

The Eastern District wasn't alone in seeing rising bankruptcy filings. Three of New York's four districts reported an increase, including a 3.3 percent rise in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York was the sole district to mark a decrease year over year of 3.3 percent. Outside of New York, Connecticut was on trend inside the district, rising 4.7 percent over the 12-month time period, while Vermont ran the other way in line with the national current, falling by 4.6 percent over the same time period.

Read the full report here.

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