Credit Karma reports that a rising number of Americans saw their credit scores decline last month.
The score-tracking site said 29% of consumers saw their scores go down in April, compared to 27% in March. By contrast, 41% saw their scores rise, compared to 43% the previous month.
Now, we need to take this information with a grain of salt. Credit Karma doesn’t use the FICO scoring formula that most lenders use, so we can’t tell the real-world implications of this data, if any.
This may well be an indication, as Credit Karma’s CEO asserts, that the recession is taking a toll on consumers’ scores. Or not. FICO hasn’t reported similar trends yet.
Here are some other Credit Karma findings:
- Ohio had been one of the states with the highest percentage of credit scores increasing, but now has the highest percentage of credit scores decreasing. In April, 31% of consumers in Ohio saw a decrease in their credit score. In March 2009, that percentage was 29%.
- California also saw a large percentage of decreasing credit scores, particularly in the Bay Area.  In the Bay Area, 36% of credit scores increased, 29% decreased, and 35% remained the same.
- For the third month in a row, the Midwest had the highest increase with 42% of consumers seeing their credit scores go up in April. In March 2009, 44% of Midwest consumers saw their credit scores rise.
For more on improving your scores, read:
“7 fast fixes for your credit score”
“Raise your credit score to 740”
“New threats to your credit score“
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