As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates again, credit card debt is already at a record high and more people are carrying debt month to month.

The Fed’s interest rate increases are meant to fight inflation, but they’ve also led to higher annual percentage rates for people with credit card debt, which means they pay more in interest. The Fed announced Wednesday that it would increase rates another quarter of a point.

With inflation still high, people are leaning on their credit cards more for everyday purchases.

“It’s the economy, inflation, gas prices and food costs,” said Lance DeJesus, 46, kitchen manager at the Golden Corral in York, Pennsylvania. “A year ago, you could go to the grocery store with a hundred bucks and come out with a bunch of bags. Now, I come out with just one bag.”

DeJesus said he carries a credit card balance of roughly $2,600 from month to month over several cards, which have interest rates from 16.99% to 21.99%.

Early in the pandemic, when DeJesus lost his job, he said that unemployment payments, stimulus checks, and child tax credits (which went to his household via his wife, who has three children) all helped him stay afloat. Now, with COVID-19-era emergency relief and stimulus policies ending, he uses credit for emergencies.

He’s not alone: 46% of people are carrying debt from month to month, up from 39% a year ago, according to Bankrate.com, an online financial information site.

Bankrate said the average credit card interest rate, or annual percentage rate, has reached 20.4% — the highest since their tracking began in the mid-1980s.

A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 35% of U.S. adults report that their household debt is higher than it was a year ago. Just 17% say it has decreased.

Roughly 4 in 10 adults in households making less than $100,000 a year say their debt is up, compared with about a quarter in households making more than that. About half of Black and Hispanic adults say their household debt has increased, compared with about 3 in 10 white adults.

Data also shows more people are now falling behind on payments, according to Bankrate analyst Greg McBride. He sees this as evidence of a so-called “K-shaped recovery” from the pandemic, in which the distance between the haves and the have-nots grows larger.

“The more than half who pay in full each month are clearly doing a lot better than the almost half who don’t,” McBride said. “Those who tend to carry balances tend to be younger people, people making lower incomes and those with lower credit scores. Another factor contributing to rising debt is inflation, which means the cost of day-to-day living is outpacing paychecks.”

Typically, on a national scale, it takes something pretty extraordinary for credit card balances to fall, economists agree. The Great Recession, beginning in 2008 and COVID-19, beginning in 2020, are two periods when they fell sharply.

During the early pandemic, credit card debt dipped 17%, Bankrate said — thanks in part to stimulus programs, emergency relief and a decrease in consumer spending.

But in the last three months of 2022, credit card balances in the U.S. increased $61 billion to $986 billion, surpassing the pre-pandemic high of $927 billion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The poll of 1,081 adults was conducted Thursday-Monday using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.