Even top earners are falling behind on credit card and car payments

Upper-income Americans are increasingly falling behind on credit card and auto loan payments, signaling an underlying vulnerability in the US economy as the labor market slows.

Delinquencies on such debts from those making at least $150,000 annually have jumped almost 20% over the last two years, faster than for middle- and lower-income borrowers, according to the credit-scoring firm VantageScore. A recent Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis study found the share of people making late card payments in the highest-income zip codes has risen twice as much over the last year as in the lowest-income ones.

The mounting liabilities coincide with a slowdown in hiring that has hit white-collar workers especially hard, raising the stakes for an economy that has come to rely more and more on…