There's finally a tiny bit of good news for the 40 million Americans with student debt

Finally, there's a least a small piece of good news about student debt.

According to the New York Federal Reserve's "Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit," the total student-debt load in America decreased between the first and second quarters of 2016, to $1.259 trillion from $1.261 trillion, a $2 billion decrease.

This decrease in aggregate student-loan debt is the first in this sort of debt since at least the start of 2003, the furthest back the New York Fed's data goes.

Typically, the first and third quarters see the most student-loan-debt growth since those periods include the start of the semester, but despite this trend there had always been, until now, a slight increase between the first and second quarters.

Additionally, student debt is still near historic levels — the number of people with student debt eclipsed 40 million last year, and the year-over-year increase was $97 billion — so it's not as if the ballooning debt load has suddenly turned.

Any decrease in debt loads, however, is good news for the millions of Americans holding these loans, and at the very least the drop is an interesting point to make note of.

(Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from NY Fed) 

Culled from Business Insider