A recession is defined as a two-quarters or longer decline in economic growth as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP). Since World War II and up until the COVID-19 epidemic, the US economy has endured 12 different recessions, beginning with an eight-month depression in 1945 and ending with the longest run of economic expansion on record.
Recessions in the United States have lasted an average of 10 months, while expansions have averaged 57 months.
When did the United States have a recession?
In the United States, the Great Recession was a severe financial crisis accompanied by a devastating recession. Although the recession officially ran from December 2007 to June 2009, the economy required many years to recover to pre-crisis employment and output levels. This delayed recovery was caused in part by consumers and financial institutions repaying debts accrued in the years leading up to the crisis, as well as government spending restraint following initial stimulus measures. It came after the housing bubble burst, the market downturn, and the subprime mortgage crisis.
According to the Department of Labor, between February 2008 and February 2010, 8.7 million jobs were lost (approximately 7%), while real GDP fell by 4.2 percent between Q4 2007 and Q2 2009, making the Great Recession the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In the second quarter of 2009, the GDP trough was attained (marking the technical end of the recession, defined as at least two consecutive quarters of declining GDP). It took until Q3 2011 for real (inflation-adjusted) GDP to return to its pre-crisis high level (Q4 2007). Unemployment increased from 4.7 percent in November 2007 to a high of 10% in October 2009, before progressively declining to 4.7 percent in May 2016. It took until May 2014 for the overall number of jobs to return to November 2007 levels.
Between 2000 and 2008, households and non-profit organizations amassed almost $8 trillion in debt (nearly doubling it and driving the housing bubble), then lowered it from the peak in Q3 2008 to Q3 2012, the only time this debt fell since at least the 1950s. However, public debt increased from 35% of GDP in 2007 to 77.5% of GDP in 2016, as the government spent more while the private sector (e.g., families and businesses, particularly the banking sector) decreased debt loads amassed during the pre-recession decade. As of December 2014, President Obama pronounced the rescue actions that began under the Bush Administration and continued under his Administration to be completed and generally beneficial.
What was the length of the US recession?
The concept of an average is simple: in a mathematical equation, you add up a lot of integers and divide them by the number of numbers in the equation. However, the average of anything often does not represent the complete story. What is the typical dog size? It depends if all of the dogs are of the same breed. Recessions are the same way, and as it turns out, no two are alike.
Of course, we can find an average, and the NBER reports that the average length of a recession since WWII has been roughly 11 months. However, mention it to someone who lived through the 2008 Great Recession, and they’ll remark “How I wish!” That’s why it’s difficult to forecast how long a recession will last or how severe it will be: each interruption has its own characteristics.
Recessions appear in a variety of forms, and the letters “V,” “U,” “W,” and “L” are frequently used to describe them. Here’s how they spell relief in several languages.
A stomach-churning downturn is followed by a significant rebound after striking the bottom in a V-shaped recession.
The trough of a U-shaped recession is less distinct. For a while, it bounces along the bottom, then gently climbs back up.
A W recession is also referred to as a “It’s a “double-dip” recession: it goes down, then back up, then down, then back up againhopefully for good this time.
An L recession is characterized by a precipitous decrease followed by…nothing for a long period. In fact, this is commonly referred to as a “despondency.”
If you guessed correctly, “Most people would agree that “V” is the most appealing. Survive a rapid plummet and come out stronger than ever.
At the present, economists can’t agree on the shape of things to come, and these differing perspectives demonstrate how difficult it is to compare recessions because their roots are so diverse.
In 2008, how long did the United States experience a recession?
Between 2007 and 2009, the Great Recession was a period of substantial overall deterioration (recession) in national economies around the world. The severity and timing of the recession differed by country (see map). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) declared it the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression at the time. As a result, normal international ties were severely disrupted.
The Great Recession was triggered by a combination of financial system vulnerabilities and a series of triggering events that began with the implosion of the United States housing bubble in 20052012. In 20072008, when property values collapsed and homeowners began to default on their mortgages, the value of mortgage-backed assets held by investment banks fell, prompting some to fail or be bailed out. The subprime mortgage crisis occurred between 2007 and 2008. The Great Recession began in the United States officially in December 2007 and lasted for 19 months, due to banks’ inability to give financing to businesses and households’ preference for paying off debt rather than borrowing and spending. Except for tiny signs in the sudden rise of forecast probabilities, which were still significantly below 50%, it appears that no known formal theoretical or empirical model was able to effectively foresee the progression of this recession, as with most earlier recessions.
While most of the world’s developed economies, particularly in North America, South America, and Europe, experienced a severe, long-term recession, many more recently developed economies, particularly China, India, and Indonesia, experienced far less impact, with their economies growing significantly during this time. Oceania, meanwhile, was spared the brunt of the damage, thanks to its proximity to Asian markets.
What has been the US’s longest recession?
This is a topical subject, given how much of the early 2008 discussion of the economy was focused to concerns about slowing growth and a possible recession.
Since the mid-1850s, the National Bureau of EconomicResearch (NBER), which determines the official dates for periods of economic expansion and contraction, has identified 32 U.S. recessions. However, for most of us, that’s a little too far back!
Let’s look at the years from the mid-1940s through the end of 2007.
Before we look at the data, it’s worth noting that there are a few different definitions of a recession.
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is a popular definition.
The NBER, on the other hand, defines a recession differently (as explained on their website):
The NBER does not define a recession as a drop in real GDP for two consecutive quarters. A recession, on the other hand, is a widespread drop in economic activity that lasts longer than a few months and is manifested in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.
According to NBER data, the average recession lasted 10 months from the mid-1940s to 2007, while the average expansion lasted 57 months, resulting in an average business cycle of 67 months, or about 5 years and 7 months. In the past, however, there has been a lot of variety in the length of economic cycle expansions and contractions. Fortunately, the United States has only had two relatively minor recessions and extended periods of expansion in the last 25 years.
Between the mid-1940s through 2007, the shortest recession lasted barely six months, from January to July 1980. During this time, the two longest recessions lasted 16 months each, one from November 1973 to March 1975 and the other from July 1981 to November 1982. There was a noticeable fall in real GDP throughout both of these eras.
Unlike most recessions, which last only a few months, periods of expansion endure considerably longer, allowing the economy to flourish over time. From the mid-1940s to 2007, the shortest expansion period lasted only 24 months, from April 1958 to April 1960. The longest expansion lasted from March 1991 to March 2001, with a total of 120 months of expansion.
Chart 1 shows the level of real GDP (in chained 2000 dollars) as well as the annual percentage rate of growth in real GDP for each quarter over a 60-year period ending in the fourth quarter of 2007. Economic contractions or recessions, as defined by the NBER, are shown by gray bars in the graph.
The blue line in the graph (on the right axis, measured in billions of chained2000 dollars) depicts the economy’s growth over time as assessed by real GDP. You can see that real GDP in the United States has been steadily increasing from the late 1940s, rising from under $2 trillion in the last half of the decade to $11.7 trillion by the end of 2007. While the overall trend is obviously upward, the chart demonstrates that real GDP tends to flatten out or decline around recessions, particularly during the longer recessions of 1973-1975 and 1981-1982. The growth pattern would be similar if you looked at monthly payroll employment data for the same six decades, albeit the downturns during recessions would be significantly more pronounced. 1
The red bars in the chart can be used to investigate the short-term gyrations in real GDP surrounding recessions in greater detail. Bars above the zero line indicate a positive annualized real GDP growth rate for that quarter, whereas bars below the zero line show real GDP falls (negative growth). 2 Recessions are characterized by quarterly reductions in real GDP, as shown in the graph. Negative growth, on the other hand, is not the only predictor of a recession. It’s conceivable to have some quarters of positive real GDP growth during a recession, just as it is possible to have some quarters of negative real GDP growth when there isn’t one. As a result, it’s easy to see why economists use a number of measures to evaluate if the economy is in a slump.
The US economy slowed substantially in late 2007 and early 2008. The initial (subject to further revisions) quarterly growth rate for real GDP in the fourth quarter of 2007 was only 0.6 percent. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the economy’s potential growth rate for 2007 is expected to be 2.7 percent (CBO). 3
Economists and the NBER will be evaluating new data on a regular basis to see if the economy in 2008 has just entered a phase of moderate development or is on the verge of a recession. Keep an eye out for updates.
As previously indicated, the quarterly falls in the 1990-1991 and 2001 recessions were quite light in comparison to most of the preceding recessions, making NBER’s job of dating them more difficult. Review Glenn D.Rudebusch’s October 19, 2001, FRBSF Economic Letter, “Has a Recession Already Started?” for an intriguing assessment of the situation in 2001, before the NBER focused on whether a recession had begun.
How long did it take to recover from the financial crisis of 2008?
When the decade-long expansion in US housing market activity peaked in 2006, the Great Moderation came to an end, and residential development began to decline. Losses on mortgage-related financial assets began to burden global financial markets in 2007, and the US economy entered a recession in December 2007. Several prominent financial firms were in financial difficulties that year, and several financial markets were undergoing substantial upheaval. The Federal Reserve responded by providing liquidity and support through a variety of measures aimed at improving the functioning of financial markets and institutions and, as a result, limiting the damage to the US economy. 1 Nonetheless, the economic downturn deteriorated in the fall of 2008, eventually becoming severe and long enough to be dubbed “the Great Recession.” While the US economy reached bottom in the middle of 2009, the recovery in the years that followed was exceptionally slow in certain ways. In response to the severity of the downturn and the slow pace of recovery that followed, the Federal Reserve provided unprecedented monetary accommodation. Furthermore, the financial crisis prompted a slew of important banking and financial regulation reforms, as well as congressional legislation that had a substantial impact on the Federal Reserve.
Rise and Fall of the Housing Market
Following a long period of expansion in US house building, home prices, and housing loans, the recession and crisis struck. This boom began in the 1990s and accelerated in the mid-2000s, continuing unabated through the 2001 recession. Between 1998 and 2006, average home prices in the United States more than doubled, the largest increase in US history, with even bigger advances in other locations. During this time, home ownership increased from 64 percent in 1994 to 69 percent in 2005, while residential investment increased from around 4.5 percent of US GDP to nearly 6.5 percent. Employment in housing-related sectors contributed for almost 40% of net private sector job creation between 2001 and 2005.
The development of the housing market was accompanied by an increase in household mortgage borrowing in the United States. Household debt in the United States increased from 61 percent of GDP in 1998 to 97 percent in 2006. The rise in home mortgage debt appears to have been fueled by a number of causes. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained a low federal funds rate after the 2001 recession, and some observers believe that by keeping interest rates low for a “long period” and only gradually increasing them after 2004, the Federal Reserve contributed to the expansion of housing market activity (Taylor 2007). Other researchers, on the other hand, believe that such variables can only explain for a small part of the rise in housing activity (Bernanke 2010). Furthermore, historically low interest rates may have been influenced by significant savings accumulations in some developing market economies, which acted to keep interest rates low globally (Bernanke 2005). Others attribute the surge in borrowing to the expansion of the mortgage-backed securities market. Borrowers who were deemed a bad credit risk in the past, maybe due to a poor credit history or an unwillingness to make a big down payment, found it difficult to get mortgages. However, during the early and mid-2000s, lenders offered high-risk, or “subprime,” mortgages, which were bundled into securities. As a result, there was a significant increase in access to housing financing, which helped to drive the ensuing surge in demand that drove up home prices across the country.
Effects on the Financial Sector
The extent to which home prices might eventually fall became a significant question for the pricing of mortgage-related securities after they peaked in early 2007, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index, because large declines in home prices were viewed as likely to lead to an increase in mortgage defaults and higher losses to holders of such securities. Large, nationwide drops in home prices were uncommon in US historical data, but the run-up in home prices was unique in terms of magnitude and extent. Between the first quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2011, property values declined by more than a fifth on average across the country. As financial market participants faced significant uncertainty regarding the frequency of losses on mortgage-related assets, this drop in home values contributed to the financial crisis of 2007-08. Money market investors became concerned of subprime mortgage exposures in August 2007, putting pressure on certain financial markets, particularly the market for asset-backed commercial paper (Covitz, Liang, and Suarez 2009). The investment bank Bear Stearns was bought by JPMorgan Chase with the help of the Federal Reserve in the spring of 2008. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September, and the Federal Reserve aided AIG, a significant insurance and financial services firm, the next day. The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were all approached by Citigroup and Bank of America for assistance.
The Federal Reserve’s assistance to specific financial firms was hardly the only instance of central bank credit expansion in reaction to the crisis. The Federal Reserve also launched a slew of new lending programs to help a variety of financial institutions and markets. A credit facility for “primary dealers,” the broker-dealers that act as counterparties to the Fed’s open market operations, as well as lending programs for money market mutual funds and the commercial paper market, were among them. The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), which was launched in collaboration with the US Department of Treasury, was aimed to relieve credit conditions for families and enterprises by offering credit to US holders of high-quality asset-backed securities.
To avoid an increase in bank reserves that would drive the federal funds rate below its objective as banks attempted to lend out their excess reserves, the Federal Reserve initially funded the expansion of Federal Reserve credit by selling Treasury securities. The Federal Reserve, on the other hand, got the right to pay banks interest on their excess reserves in October 2008. This encouraged banks to keep their reserves rather than lending them out, reducing the need for the Federal Reserve to offset its increased lending with asset reductions.2
Effects on the Broader Economy
The housing industry was at the forefront of not only the financial crisis, but also the broader economic downturn. Residential construction jobs peaked in 2006, as did residential investment. The total economy peaked in December 2007, the start of the recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The drop in general economic activity was slow at first, but it accelerated in the fall of 2008 when financial market stress reached a peak. The US GDP plummeted by 4.3 percent from peak to trough, making this the greatest recession since World War II. It was also the most time-consuming, spanning eighteen months. From less than 5% to 10%, the jobless rate has more than doubled.
The FOMC cut its federal funds rate objective from 4.5 percent at the end of 2007 to 2 percent at the start of September 2008 in response to worsening economic conditions. The FOMC hastened its interest rate decreases as the financial crisis and economic contraction worsened in the fall of 2008, bringing the rate to its effective floor a target range of 0 to 25 basis points by the end of the year. The Federal Reserve also launched the first of several large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs in November 2008, purchasing mortgage-backed assets and longer-term Treasury securities. These purchases were made with the goal of lowering long-term interest rates and improving financial conditions in general, hence boosting economic activity (Bernanke 2012).
Although the recession ended in June 2009, the economy remained poor. Economic growth was relatively mild in the first four years of the recovery, averaging around 2%, and unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, remained at historically high levels. In the face of this sustained weakness, the Federal Reserve kept the federal funds rate goal at an unusually low level and looked for new measures to provide extra monetary accommodation. Additional LSAP programs, often known as quantitative easing, or QE, were among them. In its public pronouncements, the FOMC began conveying its goals for future policy settings more fully, including the situations in which very low interest rates were likely to be appropriate. For example, the committee stated in December 2012 that exceptionally low interest rates would likely remain appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate remained above a threshold of 6.5 percent and inflation remained no more than a half percentage point above the committee’s longer-run goal of 2 percent. This “forward guidance” technique was meant to persuade the public that interest rates would remain low at least until specific economic conditions were met, exerting downward pressure on longer-term rates.
Effects on Financial Regulation
When the financial market upheaval calmed, the focus naturally shifted to financial sector changes, including supervision and regulation, in order to avoid such events in the future. To lessen the risk of financial difficulty, a number of solutions have been proposed or implemented. The amount of needed capital for traditional banks has increased significantly, with bigger increases for so-called “systemically essential” institutions (Bank for International Settlements 2011a;2011b). For the first time, liquidity criteria will legally limit the amount of maturity transformation that banks can perform (Bank for International Settlements 2013). As conditions worsen, regular stress testing will help both banks and regulators recognize risks and will require banks to spend earnings to create capital rather than pay dividends (Board of Governors 2011).
New provisions for the treatment of large financial institutions were included in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. The Financial Stability Oversight Council, for example, has the authority to classify unconventional credit intermediaries as “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” (SIFIs), putting them under Federal Reserve supervision. The act also established the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA), which authorizes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to wind down specific institutions if their failure would pose a significant risk to the financial system. Another section of the legislation mandates that large financial institutions develop “living wills,” which are detailed plans outlining how the institution could be resolved under US bankruptcy law without endangering the financial system or requiring government assistance.
The financial crisis of 2008 and the accompanying recession, like the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Inflation of the 1970s, are important areas of research for economists and policymakers. While it may be years before the causes and ramifications of these events are fully known, the attempt to unravel them provides a valuable opportunity for the Federal Reserve and other agencies to acquire lessons that can be used to shape future policy.
What will the state of the US economy be in 2021?
While GDP fell by 3.4 percent in 2020, it increased by 5.7 percent in 2021, the fastest pace of growth since 1984. With a total GDP of $23 trillion, the United States remains the world’s richest country. In addition, average hourly wages have risen 10% from $28.56 in February 2020 to $31.40 in December 2021.
Is a recession expected in 2021?
Unfortunately, a worldwide economic recession in 2021 appears to be a foregone conclusion. The coronavirus has already wreaked havoc on businesses and economies around the world, and experts predict that the devastation will only get worse. Fortunately, there are methods to prepare for a downturn in the economy: live within your means.
Is there going to be a recession in 2021?
The US economy will have a recession, but not until 2022. More business cycles will result as a result of Federal Reserve policy, which many enterprises are unprepared for. The decline isn’t expected until 2022, but it might happen as soon as 2023.
Did Covid cause the downturn?
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global economic recession known as the COVID-19 recession. In most nations, the recession began in February 2020.
The COVID-19 lockdowns and other safeguards implemented in early 2020 threw the world economy into crisis after a year of global economic downturn that saw stagnation in economic growth and consumer activity. Every advanced economy has slid into recession within seven months.
The 2020 stock market crash, which saw major indices plunge 20 to 30 percent in late February and March, was the first big harbinger of recession. Recovery began in early April 2020, and by late 2020, many market indexes had recovered or even established new highs.
Many countries had particularly high and rapid rises in unemployment during the recession. More than 10 million jobless cases have been submitted in the United States by October 2020, causing state-funded unemployment insurance computer systems and processes to become overwhelmed. In April 2020, the United Nations anticipated that worldwide unemployment would eliminate 6.7 percent of working hours in the second quarter of 2020, equating to 195 million full-time employees. Unemployment was predicted to reach around 10% in some countries, with higher unemployment rates in countries that were more badly affected by the pandemic. Remittances were also affected, worsening COVID-19 pandemic-related famines in developing countries.
In compared to the previous decade, the recession and the associated 2020 RussiaSaudi Arabia oil price war resulted in a decline in oil prices, the collapse of tourism, the hospitality business, and the energy industry, and a decrease in consumer activity. The worldwide energy crisis of 20212022 was fueled by a global rise in demand as the world emerged from the early stages of the pandemic’s early recession, mainly due to strong energy demand in Asia. Reactions to the buildup of the Russo-Ukrainian War, culminating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, aggravated the situation.