Commercial & Industrial Loans
Commercial and industrial loans outstanding at all US commercial banks — the stock of bank credit extended to businesses for working capital and investment. It reflects both companies' appetite to borrow and banks' willingness to lend, making it a two-sided gauge of the corporate credit cycle.
After inflation: +6.0% (August 2026, CPI-adjusted)
C&I loans YoY %
- C&I loans outstanding
- $2.93T
Next release: Oct 9, 2026
Latest reading
As of August 2026, C&I Loans (C&I loans YoY %) stands at 9.5% — up from 8.3% the prior reading, 29.5 pp below the June 1951 record of 39.0%. After inflation, C&I loan balances rose 6.0% over the year to August 2026. Accelerating C&I loan growth signals expansion — businesses borrowing to invest and hire; contraction signals retrenchment and tightening credit, and outright year-over-year declines have accompanied recessions and credit crunches. Pair it with the Senior Loan Officer survey: falling loan growth alongside tightening standards is a classic late-cycle warning. Series history runs from 1948 to present.
Sources, methodology & freshnessFederal Reserve H.8 via FRED (BUSLOANS), monthly, seasonally adjusted · Monthly, with every releaseData as of 2026-08-01 · Open ↓Close ↑
Full history
Year-over-year %
Month-over-month %
The latest-month change in business loans outstanding — the higher-frequency momentum read behind the year-over-year rate.
Dollar level
Total commercial & industrial loans outstanding at US banks, in dollars. The year-over-year growth above is the cyclical signal; this is the underlying stock of business credit.
Real loan growth
Commercial and industrial loan balances after CPI inflation, against the same period a year earlier. Below zero, it lost ground to prices.
Deflated by CPI-U (BLS), matched by month; the latest months appear once CPI is published.
Methodology & data
C&I Loans is sourced from Fed via the Federal Reserve's FRED service (Federal Reserve H.8 via FRED (BUSLOANS), monthly, seasonally adjusted). We pull the complete history, chart it on a monthly basis, overlay SPY for context, and generate a dated plain-English reading from the latest release — with no smoothing or adjustment beyond what the chart legend states.
Every reading is stamped with its release date. Latest observation 2026-08-01; site refreshed 2026-10-08. Maintained and reviewed by Yuriy Matso; see our methodology for the standards every series on the site is held to.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Commercial & Industrial Loans?
Commercial and industrial loans outstanding at all US commercial banks — the stock of bank credit extended to businesses for working capital and investment. It reflects both companies' appetite to borrow and banks' willingness to lend, making it a two-sided gauge of the corporate credit cycle.
How do you read C&I Loans?
Accelerating C&I loan growth signals expansion — businesses borrowing to invest and hire; contraction signals retrenchment and tightening credit, and outright year-over-year declines have accompanied recessions and credit crunches. Pair it with the Senior Loan Officer survey: falling loan growth alongside tightening standards is a classic late-cycle warning.
Where does the C&I Loans data come from?
Federal Reserve H.8 via FRED (BUSLOANS), monthly, seasonally adjusted. We chart the full history and publish a dated, plain-English reading with every release; the raw series is downloadable as CSV at /data/indicators/ci-loans.csv.
How often is C&I Loans updated?
C&I Loans is a monthly series from Fed, refreshed here as soon as a new release posts to FRED.
After inflation: +6.0% (August 2026, CPI-adjusted)
C&I loans YoY %
- C&I loans outstanding
- $2.93T
Next release: Oct 9, 2026