Generation Z is more prone to max out credit cards, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said this week, with over 15% using nearly all available credit.

The bank, part of the wider Federal Reserve system, defines Gen Zers as people born between 1995 and 2011. 

In its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the first quarter of 2024 released Tuesday, the New York Fed found that Gen Zers had a median balance of $760, a median credit limit of $4,500, and that 15.3% of Zoomer consumers had maxed out their cards, defined as using 90% or more of their available credit.

---

---

Overall, 23% of the nation’s available aggregate credit was being used, with usage rates varying. For example, while 52% of all borrowers used less than a fifth of their available credit in the first quarter of 2024, 18% of all borrowers had maxed out their cards.

Compared with Gen Zers, millennials had a 12.1% maxed-out rate, while Gen X was at 9.6% and boomers at 4.8%.

The report also found that poorer people are likelier to max out their credit cards, with 12.3% of those in the lowest quartile of income having done so in the first quarter of 2024 compared with 10.2% in the second quartile of income.

The New York Fed highlights the maxed-out category because people in it are likelier to become delinquent on their credit card payments.

Borrowers just becoming delinquent had a median credit use rate in the previous quarter of 90%. Delinquency has also jumped since the pandemic, with a third of balances linked to maxed-out users missing payments compared with less than a quarter of maxed-out balances doing so before the pandemic, the New York Fed said.

Over the past year, 8.9% of credit card balances nationwide lapsed into delinquency, New York Fed researchers said, according to CNBC. In total, Americans owe $1.12 trillion.