Here is a spooky financial scenario: over seven million Americans are more than three months behind on their loan payments. Some owe much more than the asset is actually worth. And many of those loans are “subprime,” taken out by borrowers with poor credit.To get more auto finance news, you can visit shine news official website.

Sound familiar? No, it’s not the housing crisis of more than a decade ago—it’s auto loans, circa 2020. And it’s making some economists very nervous indeed. “There are a few things that are worrying: The amount being financed, the shoddy underwriting for consumers with weaker credit, and the negative equity being rolled over from one loan to the next,” says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for personal finance website Bankrate.com. “We’ve seen this movie before on the mortgage side—and it didn’t end well.”So what’s going on? While headline economic numbers like stock-market averages have been faring well, and the wealth of the 1% has been ballooning by trillions, lower-income Americans are suffering—and it’s showing up in their car loans.

We haven’t heard much about these loans, since many politicians and activists are focused on other kinds of debt—like student loans, now at a whopping $1.6 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. But auto loans aren’t far behind: They too have rocketed past a trillion, and now stand at around $1.2 trillion, according to a report by credit agency Experian. And the condition of those loans is worrisome. Almost 5% of the total auto-loan balance is now more than 90 days delinquent, according to the Household Debt and Credit report from the New York Fed. That’s the highest share since the post-financial crisis days.

The portion of the total that is rising the fastest: “Deep subprime,” or those with credit scores between 300-500. Those debts rose 7.8% year-over-year, according to Experian’s “State of the Automotive Finance Market” report. “In the mortgage market, the percentage of subprime loans is now very low,” says David Musto, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “But with car loans, the percentage of subprime is right where we were before—and with a bigger balance. And with longer terms on those loans, it means people are spending longer time in a negative-equity situation.”