Methodology & Data Sources

Data Sources

PlainBankruptcy draws from three official sources to provide full context around bankruptcy filing trends:

  • Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) Judicial Caseload Statistics — The primary source. Published annually, this covers aggregate filing counts by bankruptcy chapter (7, 11, 12, 13) and judicial district. Source: uscourts.gov
  • BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics — Annual unemployment rates by state, used to provide economic context alongside filing trends. Source: bls.gov/lau
  • U.S. Census Bureau — Population data used to calculate per-capita filing rates for fair cross-state and cross-district comparisons. Source: census.gov/popest

Data Vintage & Coverage

PlainBankruptcy covers fiscal years 2015 through 2024 — 10 years of federal bankruptcy filing data. Coverage includes all 90 active federal judicial districts. Data represents aggregate statistical counts, not individual case records.

How We Process the Data

Our ETL pipeline ingests data from three federal sources, normalizes it, and produces the integrated dataset that powers all page types on PlainBankruptcy. The pipeline follows this sequence:

  1. Download annual Judicial Caseload Statistics tables from the AOUSC website for each fiscal year in the coverage period
  2. Parse filing counts by district, chapter (7, 11, 12, 13), and year from the semi-structured statistical tables
  3. Join with Census Bureau population estimates to compute per-capita filing rates (filings per 100,000 residents) for fair cross-district comparison
  4. Join with BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics to provide economic context for trend analysis, matching state-year combinations
  5. Aggregate district-level data to state and national totals, preserving chapter-level breakdowns at each geographic level
  6. Compute year-over-year change metrics and multi-year trend indicators
  7. Load into our search-optimized SQLite database serving district, state, and national pages

Per-Capita Calculations

Per-capita filing rates use Census Bureau population estimates for the corresponding year. Rates are expressed as filings per 100,000 residents, enabling fair comparison across districts and states with very different population sizes. Without per-capita normalization, large states would always appear to have more bankruptcy filings simply due to population, making direct comparisons misleading. The per-capita rate reveals the true intensity of bankruptcy activity relative to the resident population.

Limitations

  • PlainBankruptcy presents aggregate statistical data only — we have no access to individual case records (those are in PACER, the federal court system's public access portal)
  • Bankruptcy statistics are filed by fiscal year (October–September), not calendar year
  • Chapter 12 (family farmer) filings are relatively rare and may show as zero in many districts
  • This is statistical information only — not legal advice

How the Source Agency Collects Data

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts compiles bankruptcy filing statistics from all 94 federal judicial districts. When an individual or business files a bankruptcy petition with a U.S. Bankruptcy Court clerk's office, the case is recorded in the court's Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system. The AOUSC aggregates these filings into annual statistical tables that break down cases by chapter, district, and filing type (business vs. non-business). These statistical publications represent the official count of bankruptcy activity in the federal court system.

Data Accuracy Commitment

PlainBankruptcy presents AOUSC and Census data without modification. Filing counts, per-capita rates, and trend calculations are computed directly from the published source data. We do not estimate filing counts for unreported periods or adjust figures. If you find any data that appears incorrect, please contact us and we will verify against the source publications.

Contact

Questions about our methodology or found a data error? Reach us at hello@plainbankruptcy.com or through our contact page.