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Longest recession since 1930s ended in June 2009, group says
Loading ...The longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression ended in June 2009, lasting 18 months, the National Bureau of Economic Research said.
“The committee decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession that began in December 2007,” the Cambridge, Mass.-based bureau’s business cycle dating group said Monday. “The basis for this decision was the length and strength of the recovery to date.” The committee is the accepted arbiter of when recessions start and end.
Marked by a collapse in housing and sub-prime mortgage lending that triggered a global meltdown in financial markets, the downturn trailed the 43-month Great Depression that lasted from 1929 to 1933, surpassing the 16-month contractions of 1973- 75 and 1981-82. More than 8 million workers lost their jobs as a result of the recession, a slump that may take years to fix.
“The crisis imposed a huge cost on the nation and an even bigger cost on the people who suffered above-normal unemployment,” Robert Hall, Stanford University professor who heads the NBER committee, said in an interview in February. “The big factor in this recession is rapid productivity growth in all its phases, which implies deficient job growth even with normal output growth.”
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