While I was busy with last week's Debtor World conference, the April 2008 bankruptcy filing figures became available from AACER. If I wanted to be sensational, I could compare the latest figures to the 2007 figures and tout how filings are up over 37% from the previous year. Or, I could compare the April 2008 total of 93,096 to the March figure and note filings climbed 3% in one month. Although both of those calculations are technically correct, they also are misleading.

It is popular to assume the increases in the bankruptcy filing rate are tied to the home mortgage foreclosure crisis here in the United States. Is that really the case? I've checked the data, and it appears that it is.

Melanie Fletcher lost her job in 2006, when her position as a program educator for Oregon's Washington County was eliminated. She was able to secure another job within the same office, and though it paid less she and her husband, an optician, managed to get by on their combined incomes. Then the Fletchers decided to sell their home in Beaverton last year and move to a rural area near their relatives, about an hour away. That was when the trouble started.

Business and individual bankruptcy filings in the U.S. in October increased 20 percent over September and 37 percent above the same month in 2006, according to Mike Bickford, president of Oklahoma City-based Jupiter eSource LLC's.

Filings are headed for a total of 824,000 for 2007, a 40 percent increase over 2006 as a whole, according to Bickford's provider of bankruptcy data management services, known as Automated Access to Court Electronic Records.

First quarter bankruptcy filings across the U.S. rose 70 percent compared to the first three months of 2006, according to statistics complied by Jupiter eSource LLC from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.