This Is the State With the Most Credit Card Debt

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 10, 10:30AM EST

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This Is the State With the Most Credit Card Debt — © Kenishirotie / Getty Images

Nationwide, Americans owe $807 billion across 506 million credit cards. That means there are 1.5 cards per person. That figure is misleading to the extent that few people under 18 have a card. Some studies show characteristics of credit card debt by demographics. As would be expected, people with higher incomes have more debt than people in lower-income brackets.

Including both bank and retail plastic, credit card debt averaged $6,569 per cardholder with unpaid balances in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to 2022 Credit Card Debt Statistics from Lending Tree. Just like housing costs and gas prices, credit card debt varies by state.

To determine the state with the most credit card debt, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Lending Tree’s report. States were ranked on the average credit card debt per cardholder, using credit report data from 2021.

New Jerseyans shouldered the most credit card debt at an average of $7,872 per cardholder. Other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have residents with high unpaid balances, as well. Connecticut came in at number two with average debt per cardholder of $7,721, while the average debt in third place Maryland was $7,464.
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Meanwhile, Kentuckians are living comparatively debt-free with an average unpaid credit card balance of $5,441. That is nearly $2,500 less than New Jersey cardholders. The disparity could be attributed to the higher cost of living in the Garden State. According to a 24/7 Wall St. study, the cost of living in New Jersey is 15% higher than the average nationwide, while the cost of living in Kentucky is 7% less than average.

Click here to see all the states with the most credit card debt.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.