Annual federal bankruptcy filing volume by chapter across nearly three decades. The data reveal four distinct regime shifts: the BAPCPA pre-deadline surge (2005), the post-BAPCPA collapse (2006), the Great Recession-era plateau (2008-2011), and the most surprising pattern of all — the COVID-era decrease in filings (2020-2022).
Filings climbed steadily from ~2,400/year (1997) to ~12,500 (2003), peaking at 10,782 in 2005 in the run-up to the October 2005 BAPCPA effective date. The 2005 spike specifically reflects debtors rushing to file under the more favorable pre-BAPCPA rules. The increase was anticipated and encouraged by the consumer-bankruptcy bar, which had warned clients of the pending changes.
The 52% single-year drop from 2005 to 2006 is one of the cleanest "policy effect" signals in modern bankruptcy data. Several factors converged:
By 2007-2008, filings had partially recovered as the system absorbed the new rules.
The Great Recession-driven peak in 2010 (8,217) reflects the foreclosure crisis, mortgage-fueled distress, and the unwinding of pre-2008 housing bubble equity. Filings sustained at elevated levels through 2011, then declined steadily through 2017 as the economy recovered.
The most counterintuitive finding in the dataset. Conventional wisdom expected COVID to produce a massive bankruptcy wave; the empirical reality is the opposite. Three explanations:
The 2020-2022 period demonstrates that direct fiscal intervention can prevent bankruptcy waves even during severe economic shocks. This finding is being cited in policy literature on recession response design.
As stimulus ended, moratoriums lifted, and the cumulative effect of post-pandemic inflation materialized, bankruptcy filings have rebounded. The 2024-2025 levels (~8,500/year average) are returning to pre-pandemic baseline, but with notable shifts in chapter mix — Chapter 11 volume in 2024-2025 (725, 1,119) is more than 4x the 2022 level (190), reflecting business-side distress as commercial real estate and small-business sectors absorb the post-zero-rate-environment stress.
| Year | Ch. 7 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 13 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | 1,594 | 15 | 806 | 2,415 |
| 1998 | 2,663 | 18 | 898 | 3,579 |
| 1999 | 2,268 | 21 | 924 | 3,213 |
| 2000 | 2,112 | 23 | 1,678 | 3,813 |
| 2001 | 3,850 | 47 | 3,687 | 7,584 |
| 2002 | 4,350 | 33 | 4,371 | 8,754 |
| 2003 | 6,407 | 43 | 6,060 | 12,510 |
| 2004 | 4,398 | 36 | 4,745 | 9,179 |
| 2005 | 6,610 | 34 | 4,138 | 10,782 |
| 2006 | 2,203 | 22 | 2,802 | 5,027 |
| 2007 | 3,435 | 48 | 3,348 | 6,831 |
| 2008 | 3,671 | 80 | 3,069 | 6,820 |
| 2009 | 3,981 | 154 | 3,040 | 7,175 |
| 2010 | 4,635 | 211 | 3,371 | 8,217 |
| 2011 | 4,023 | 227 | 3,318 | 7,568 |
| 2012 | 3,193 | 148 | 2,817 | 6,158 |
| 2013 | 3,582 | 179 | 2,839 | 6,600 |
| 2014 | 3,752 | 157 | 3,283 | 7,192 |
| 2015 | 3,393 | 163 | 3,318 | 6,874 |
| 2016 | 3,246 | 205 | 3,631 | 7,082 |
| 2017 | 3,404 | 175 | 3,942 | 7,521 |
| 2018 | 3,448 | 241 | 4,431 | 8,120 |
| 2019 | 3,820 | 235 | 5,538 | 9,593 |
| 2020 | 2,561 | 200 | 3,072 | 5,833 |
| 2021 | 2,029 | 219 | 2,527 | 4,775 |
| 2022 | 1,587 | 190 | 2,894 | 4,671 |
| 2023 | 1,951 | 314 | 3,682 | 5,947 |
| 2024 | 3,280 | 725 | 4,201 | 8,206 |
| 2025 | 3,847 | 1,119 | 4,025 | 8,991 |
Data are from the OBP empirical dataset of 218,913 federal bankruptcy cases. The sample is drawn from PACER pulls focused on a research subset of districts; absolute volumes reflect data-collection focus, not national prevalence. Year-over-year shape and inflection points are sampling-bias resistant and consistent with national reporting from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Full filing-volume time series CSV: filing_volume_by_year_chapter.csv (CC BY 4.0).
Open Bankruptcy Project (2026). Bankruptcy Filing Volume Time Series 1997-2025, v0.1. 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 41-5159631). URL: https://viz.openbankruptcyproject.org/filing-trends/ License: CC BY 4.0