September 17, 2025, Berkeley, CA — The nonpartisan California Policy Lab (CPL) released a new analysis today, showing that 11% of California student loan borrowers are 30+ days late on paying back their loans. The student loan pause ended two years ago, but borrowers had a one-year “on-ramp” to resume payments. In April this year, the Department of Education announced that collections on the loans would resume. Previous CPL research found that a large portion of borrowers were likely to struggle to repay their student loans once payments resumed
“The share of borrowers who are 30+ days late on paying back their student loans surged during the first two quarters of 2025,” explains Evan White, Executive Director of the California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site, and a member of the research team that created and maintains the California Credit Dashboard. “Older borrowers have higher delinquency rates, and both Boomers and Gen X’s delinquency rates are now at 12%, while Gen Z is at 9.4%.”
The fact sheet uses credit bureau data from the California Credit Dashboard with data through the second quarter of 2025.
Key findings:
1. Older borrowers pay more. One possible reason for higher delinquency rates among older borrowers is that they typically owe a larger monthly payment on their student loans. The average Boomer with student debt owes $150 per month in student loan payments, which is 2.4 times that of the average Millennial ($62/month) and 5.8 times that of the average Gen Zer ($26/month).These loans may have paid for their own education or for their child’s. (note: These averages include all student loan payments for each borrower, whereas the California Credit Dashboard shows average monthly payments per loan. Both include a substantial number of borrowers with $0 payments because they are in income-driven repayment programs. Among borrowers who owe more than $0 each month, their total student loan bill (across all loans) is $123 on average, and is even higher for Gen X and Boomers ($178 and $220, respectively).
2. Regional impacts. The student loan delinquency crisis is also more pronounced in more rural, lower-income regions of the state. Delinquencies in the Central Valley are above 16% but delinquencies in the large urban metros (Bay Area and Los Angeles) are closer to 10%. This disparity may reflect differences in economic opportunity between the coastal and inland regions of the state.
3. Monthly payments are down. The high delinquency rates are happening even though average monthly student loan payments are much lower now than before the pandemic. An average student loan borrower owes $66 per month in student loan payments, which is down 37% since the first quarter of 2020, when it was $105. This could be due to many factors, including that a larger share of borrowers are now in income-driven repayment plans and some borrowers had some student debt forgiven by the Biden administration. This trend may change with the passage of the recent federal budget bill, which eliminated the main income-driven repayment plan (SAVE) and replaced it with a plan with terms less favorable to borrowers (e.g., higher minimum payments, longer periods before forgiveness).
4. A dip in new student loans? One potential bright spot is that new college students in California seem to be taking on less educational debt over the past year. The average amount of new student loans was $13,200, a 23% reduction from the same time last year when the average was $17,100. Many factors could be driving this trend, including students choosing more affordable schools, but the repayment struggles of their older peers may be on their minds as well. (Note: student loan originations are highly seasonal so the analysis uses four-quarter moving averages. New originations also take time to appear in the data, so the last four quarters from the observed data are projected, using prior appearance patterns.)
California Credit Dashboard: Insights into Californians’ Financial Health
The insights from the fact sheet are from the interactive California Credit Dashboard, which includes 10 longitudinal charts for 6 types of debt (auto, credit card, home equity, mortgage, student, and other) and collections. The 10 figures can be sorted by 7 age groups, 9 economic regions, and 5 credit ratings. The Dashboard also includes 4 county-level maps which can be filtered by generation, loan type, credit score, and timeframe (2004 to present).
Using the interactive the maps, users can compare:
-Delinquency rates
-New loan amounts
-Monthly payments
More about the California Credit Dashboard
The Dashboard uses credit-bureau data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel. All figures in the Dashboard are based on a 2% random sample of individuals. Where applicable, the results are multiplied by 50 to obtain the full-population estimate. A technical appendix provides detailed information about the data and underlying research. Several dozen faculty and graduate students from the University of California currently use this dataset for research.
The California Policy Lab is an institute based at the University of California that generates research insights for government impact. Through hands-on partnerships with government agencies, CPL performs rigorous research across issue silos and builds the data infrastructure necessary to improve programs and policies that millions of Californians rely on every day.