Graph and download economic data for Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator (JHDUSRGDPBR) from Q4 1967 to Q1 2025 about recession indicators, GDP, and USA.

This dataset includes various economic indicators such as stock market performance, inflation rates, GDP, interest rates, employment data, and housing index, all of which are crucial for understanding the state of the economy. By analysing this dataset, one can gain insights into the causes and effects of past recessions in the US, which can inform investment decisions and policy-making.

There are 20 columns and 343 rows spanning 1990-04 to 2022-10

The columns are:

1. Price: Price column refers to the S&P 500 lot price over the years. The S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. This variable represents the value of the S&P 500 index from 1980 to present. Industrial Production: This variable measures the output of industrial establishments in the manufacturing, mining, and utilities sectors. It reflects the overall health of the manufacturing industry, which is a key component of the US economy.

2. INDPRO: Industrial production measures the output of the manufacturing, mining, and utility sectors of the economy. It provides insights into the overall health of the economy, as a decline in industrial production can indicate a slowdown in economic activity. This data can be used by policymakers and investors to assess the state of the economy and make informed decisions.

3. CPI: CPI stands for Consumer Price Index, which measures the change in the prices of a basket of goods and services that consumers purchase. CPI inflation represents the rate at which the prices of goods and services in the economy are increasing.

4. Treasure Bill rate (3 month to 30 Years): Treasury bills (T-bills) are short-term debt securities issued by the US government. This variable represents the interest rates on T-bills with maturities ranging from 3 months to 30 years. It reflects the cost of borrowing money for the government and provides an indication of the overall level of interest rates in the economy.

5. GDP: GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product, which is the value of all goods and services produced in a country. This dataset is taking into account only the Nominal GDP values. Nominal GDP represents the total value of goods and services produced in the US economy without accounting for inflation.

6. Rate: The Federal Funds Rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight. It is set by the Federal Reserve and is used as a tool to regulate the money supply in the economy.

7. BBK_Index: The BBKI are maintained and produced by the Indiana Business Research Center at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. The BBK Coincident and Leading Indexes and Monthly GDP Growth for the U.S. are constructed from a collapsed dynamic factor analysis of a panel of 490 monthly measures of real economic activity and quarterly real GDP growth. The BBK Leading Index is the leading subcomponent of the cycle measured in standard deviation units from trend real GDP growth.

8. Housing Index: This variable represents the value of the housing market in the US. It is calculated based on the prices of homes sold in the market and provides an indication of the overall health of the housing market.

9. Recession binary column: This variable is a binary indicator that takes a value of 1 when the US economy is in a recession and 0 otherwise. It is based on the official business cycle dates provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Long Depression was, by a large margin, the longest-lasting recession in U.S. history. It began in the U.S. with the Panic of 1873, and lasted for over five years. This depression was the largest in a series of recessions at the turn of the 20th century, which proved to be a period of overall stagnation as the U.S. financial markets failed to keep pace with industrialization and changes in monetary policy. Great Depression The Great Depression, however, is widely considered to have been the most severe recession in U.S. history. Following the Wall Street Crash in 1929, the country's economy collapsed, wages fell and a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. It would take almost four years for recovery to begin. Additionally, U.S. expansion and integration in international markets allowed the depression to become a global event, which became a major catalyst in the build up to the Second World War. Decreasing severity When comparing recessions before and after the Great Depression, they have generally become shorter and less frequent over time. Only three recessions in the latter period have lasted more than one year. Additionally, while there were 12 recessions between 1880 and 1920, there were only six recessions between 1980 and 2020. The most severe recession in recent years was the financial crisis of 2007 (known as the Great Recession), where irresponsible lending policies and lack of government regulation allowed for a property bubble to develop and become detached from the economy over time, this eventually became untenable and the bubble burst. Although the causes of both the Great Depression and Great Recession were similar in many aspects, economists have been able to use historical evidence to try and predict, prevent, or limit the impact of future recessions.

In 2025, it was estimated that over 163 million Americans were in some form of employment, while 4.16 percent of the total workforce was unemployed. This was the lowest unemployment rate since the 1950s, although these figures are expected to rise in 2023 and beyond. 1980s-2010s Since the 1980s, the total United States labor force has generally risen as the population has grown, however, the annual average unemployment rate has fluctuated significantly, usually increasing in times of crisis, before falling more slowly during periods of recovery and economic stability. For example, unemployment peaked at 9.7 percent during the early 1980s recession, which was largely caused by the ripple effects of the Iranian Revolution on global oil prices and inflation. Other notable spikes came during the early 1990s; again, largely due to inflation caused by another oil shock, and during the early 2000s recession. The Great Recession then saw the U.S. unemployment rate soar to 9.6 percent, following the collapse of the U.S. housing market and its impact on the banking sector, and it was not until 2016 that unemployment returned to pre-recession levels. 2020s 2019 had marked a decade-long low in unemployment, before the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic saw the sharpest year-on-year increase in unemployment since the Great Depression, and the total number of workers fell by almost 10 million people. Despite the continuation of the pandemic in the years that followed, alongside the associated supply-chain issues and onset of the inflation crisis, unemployment reached just 3.67 percent in 2022 - current projections are for this figure to rise in 2023 and the years that follow, although these forecasts are subject to change if recent years are anything to go by.

This dataset provides information on the three macroeconomic sectoral balances, covering 195 countries over 45 years.

Macroeconomic analysis often focuses on the 'twin deficits' - the government deficit and the current account deficit. This is an incomplete view which leaves out the private sector balance.

The three sectoral balances must sum up to zero, by accounting identity (UN System of National Accounts 2008):

(S – I) + (T – G) + (M – X) = 0

Economists using the two-dimensional view have famously missed the global financial crisis, while those using accounting models covering all three sectoral balances were able to predict it (Bezemer 2010, Galbraith 2012). However, data on private sector deficits/surpluses is not readily available. Only the public and current account balances are published regularly by the IMF's World Economic Outlook.

Beyond developed countries, looking at the private sector balance is critical for analyzing and crafting policies in developing countries. The frequently recommended policy of 'fiscal consolidation', i.e. reducing public deficits, is revealed in the sectoral balances to also reduce, ceteris paribus, the private sector surplus (or increase its deficit), slowing down or even reversing development and poverty reduction (Assa and Morgan 2025).

The dataset was calculated based on two publicly available series from the IMF World Economic Outlook (downloaded October 2025): General government net lending/borrowing (coded as GOV) and Current account balance (coded as CAB). From this we calculated the private sector balance as PRV = CAB - GOV. We converted CAB to ROW (ROW = -CAB), the rest of the world balance, and made sure that ROW, GOV and PRV add up to zero as required by the national accounting identity. All years containing IMF forecasts were removed.

References:

Assa, J., & Morgan, M. (2025). The General Relativity of Fiscal Space: Theory and Applications. Review of Political Economy, 1-35.

Bezemer, D. J. (2010). Understanding financial crisis through accounting models. Accounting, organizations and society, 35(7), 676-688.

Galbraith, J. K. (2012). Who are these economists, anyway?. In Contributions in Stock-flow Modeling: Essays in Honor of Wynne Godley (pp. 63-75). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

United Nations (2008). System of National Accounts 2008. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/sna2008.asp

The Covid-19 pandemic saw growth fall by 2.2 percent, compared with an increase of 2.5 percent the year before. The last time the real GDP growth rates fell by a similar level was during the Great Recession in 2009, and the only other time since the Second World War where real GDP fell by more than one percent was in the early 1980s recession. The given records began following the Wall Street Crash in 1929, and GDP growth fluctuated greatly between the Great Depression and the 1950s, before growth became more consistent.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between economic crises and social policy change for 13 European countries. Based on the degree of policy expansion and dismantling, we identify three potential crisis-coping strategies, namely ‘Muddling Through’, ‘Social Protectionism’ and ‘Austerity’. By means of multinomial logistic regression analysis, we test the effect of various factors on governments’ choice of crisis-coping strategies for 45 economic crises between 1980 and 2013. Our analysis reveals that Austerity becomes a more likely scenario in crisis times. Moreover, we demonstrate that governments in consensual systems do not deviate from their true policy preferences when facing economic hardship. In majoritarian systems, by contrast, this pattern is strikingly reversed. Here, left-wing governments resort to Austerity, while right-wing parties opt for Social Protectionism. This indicates that both blame avoidance and the capabilities to mediate unpopular reform decisions can convert political parties from ‘Saul to Paul’ and vice versa.

View economic output, reported as the nominal value of all new goods and services produced by labor and property located in the U.S.

Gross National Product in Japan increased to 596734.80 JPY Billion in the third quarter of 2025 from 593836 JPY Billion in the second quarter of 2025. This dataset provides - Japan Gross National Income - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

The gross domestic product (GDP) in current prices in Spain stood at 1.73 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. Between 1980 and 2024, the GDP rose by 1.49 trillion U.S. dollars, though the increase followed an uneven trajectory rather than a consistent upward trend. The GDP will steadily rise by 654.87 billion U.S. dollars over the period from 2024 to 2030, reflecting a clear upward trend.This indicator describes the gross domestic product at current prices. The values are based upon the GDP in national currency converted to U.S. dollars using market exchange rates (yearly average). The GDP represents the total value of final goods and services produced during a year.

In 2024, the growth of the real gross domestic product (GDP) in Argentina stood at -1.34 percent. Between 1980 and 2024, the figure dropped by 2.04 percentage points, though the decline followed an uneven course rather than a steady trajectory. From 2024 to 2030, the growth will rise by 4.55 percentage points, showing an overall upward trend with periodic ups and downs.This indicator describes the annual change in the gross domestic product at constant prices, expressed in national currency units. Here the gross domestic product represents the total value of the final goods and services produced during a year.

Unemployment Rate in Denmark remained unchanged at 2.60 percent in October. This dataset provides - Denmark Unemployment Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

Public sector net debt amounted to 93.5 percent of gross domestic product in the United Kingdom during the 2024/25 financial year. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, UK government debt has reached levels not seen since the early 1960s, due to a significant increase in borrowing in 2020/21. After peaking at 251.7 percent shortly after the end of the Second World War, government debt in the UK gradually fell, before a sharp increase in the late 2000s at the time of the global financial crisis. Debt not expected to start falling until 2029/30 In 2024/25, the UK's government expenditure was approximately 1.28 trillion pounds, around 44 percent of GDP. This spending was financed by 1.14 trillion pounds of revenue raised, and almost 150 billion pounds of borrowing. Although the UK government can continue to borrow money to finance its spending, the amount spent on debt interest has increased significantly in recent years. Current forecasts suggest that while the debt is eventually expected to start declining, this is based on falling government deficits in the next five years. Government facing hard choices Hitting fiscal targets, such as reducing the national debt, will require a careful balancing of the books from the current government, and the possibility for either spending cuts or tax rises. Although Labour ruled out raising the main government tax sources, Income Tax, National Insurance, and VAT, at the 2024 election, they did raise National Insurance for employers (rather than employees) and also cut Winter Fuel allowances for large numbers of pensioners. Less than a year after implementing cuts to Winter Fuel, the government performed a U-Turn on the issue, and also held back on more significant cuts to welfare.

In 2024, Japan had an average inflation rate of 2.74 percent. Japan's inflation rate had hit a record high in 2023 at 3.27 percent, marking the highest rate of inflation in Japan in recent times. However, this figure was still very low compared to most other major economies, such as Japan's fellow G7 members, four of which had inflation rates around six or seven percent in 2023 due to the global inflation crisis. Why is Japan's inflation rate lower? There are a number of contributing factors to Japan's relatively low inflation rate, even during economic crises. Japan eased its Covid restrictions more slowly than most other major economies, this prevented post-pandemic consumer spending that may have driven inflation through supply chain issues caused by higher demand. As the majority of Japan's food and energy comes from overseas, and has done so for decades, the government has mechanisms in place to prevent energy and wheat prices from rising too quickly. Because of this, Japan was able to shield its private sector from many of the negative knock on effects from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which had a significant impact on both sectors globally. Persistent deflation and national debt An additional factor that has eased the impact of inflation on Japan's economy is the fact that it experienced deflation before the pandemic. Deflation has been a persistent problem in Japan since the asset price bubble burst in 1992, and has been symptomatic of Japan's staggering national debt thereafter. For almost 30 years, a combination of quantitative easing, low interest rates (below 0.5 percent since 1995, and at -0.1% since 2016), and a lack of spending due to low wages and an aging population have combined to give Japan the highest national debt in the world in absolute terms, and second-highest debt in relation to its GDP, after Venezuela. Despite this soaring debt, Japan remains the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind the U.S., China, and Germany.

On October 29, 1929, the U.S. experienced the most devastating stock market crash in it's history. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 set in motion the Great Depression, which lasted for twelve years and affected virtually all industrialized countries. In the United States, GDP fell to it's lowest recorded level of just 57 billion U.S dollars in 1933, before rising again shortly before the Second World War. After the war, GDP fluctuated, but it increased gradually until the Great Recession in 2008. Real GDP Real GDP allows us to compare GDP over time, by adjusting all figures for inflation. In this case, all numbers have been adjusted to the value of the US dollar in FY2012. While GDP rose every year between 1946 and 2008, when this is adjusted for inflation it can see that the real GDP dropped at least once in every decade except the 1960s and 2010s. The Great Recession Apart from the Great Depression, and immediately after WWII, there have been two times where both GDP and real GDP dropped together. The first was during the Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 until June 2009 in the US, although its impact was felt for years after this. After the collapse of the financial sector in the US, the government famously bailed out some of the country's largest banking and lending institutions. Since recovery began in late 2009, US GDP has grown year-on-year, and reached 21.4 trillion dollars in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic and the associated lockdowns then saw GDP fall again, for the first time in a decade. As economic recovery from the pandemic has been compounded by supply chain issues, inflation, and rising global geopolitical instability, it remains to be seen what the future holds for the U.S. economy.

From the late 19th century until the 1980s, the United States' unemployment rate was generally somewhere between three and ten percent of the total workforce. The periods when it peaked were in times of recession or depression - the Panic of 1893, which lasted until 1897, saw unemployment peak at over 18 percent, whereas the post-WWI recession saw unemployment spike to almost 12 percent in 1921.

However, the longest and most-severe period of mass unemployment in U.S. history came during the Great Depression - unemployment rose from just 3.2 percent in 1929 to one quarter of the total workforce in 1933, and it was not until the Second World War until it fell below five percent once more. Since this time, unemployment has never exceeded 10 percent, although it did come close during the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s.

More recent unemployment statistics for the U.S. can be found here.

With a Gross Domestic Product of over 4.3 trillion Euros, the German economy was by far the largest in Europe in 2024. The similarly sized economies of the United Kingdom and France were the second and third largest economies in Europe during this year, followed by Italy and Spain. The smallest economy in this statistic is that of the small Balkan nation of Montenegro, which had a GDP of 7.4 billion Euros. In this year, the combined GDP of the 27 member states that compose the European Union amounted to approximately 17.95 trillion Euros. The big five Germany’s economy has consistently had the largest economy in Europe since 1980, even before the reunification of West and East Germany. The United Kingdom, by contrast, has had mixed fortunes during the same period and had a smaller economy than Italy in the late 1980s. The UK also suffered more than the other major economies during the recession of the late 2000s, meaning the French economy was the second largest on the continent for some time afterward. The Spanish economy was continually the fifth-largest in Europe in this 38-year period, and from 2004 onwards, has been worth more than one trillion Euros. The smallest GDP, the highest economic growth in Europe Despite having the smallerst GDP of Europe, Montenegro emerged as the fastest growing economy in the continent, achieving an impressive annual growth rate of 4.5 percent, surpassing Turkey's growth rate of 4 percent. Overall,this Balkan nation has shown a remarkable economic recovery since the 2010 financial crisis, with its GDP projected to grow by 28.71 percent between 2024 and 2029. Contributing to this positive trend are successful tourism seasons in recent years, along with increased private consumption and rising imports. Europe's economic stagnation Malta, Albania, Iceland, and Croatia were among the countries reporting some of the highest growth rates this year. However, Europe's overall performance reflected a general slowdown in growth compared to the trend seen in 2021, during the post-pandemic recovery. Estonia experienced the sharpest negative growth in 2023, with its economy shrinking by 2.3% compared to 2022, primarily due to the negative impact of sanctions placed on its large neighbor, Russia. Other nations, including Sweden, Germany, and Finland, also recorded slight negative growth.

In 2024, China’s level of total investment reached around 40.4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This value is expected to remain stable in 2025 and increase slightly in the following years. Final consumption accounted for 55.7 percent in 2023. International comparison of total investments The GDP of a country can be calculated by the expenditure approach, which sums up final consumption (private and public), total investment, and net exports. The ratio of consumption to investment may vary greatly between different countries.Matured economies normally consume a larger share of their economic output. In the U.S. and many European countries, total investment ranges roughly at only 20 to 25 percent of the GDP. In comparison, some emerging economies reached levels of 30 to 40 percent of investment during times of rapid economic development. Level of total investment in China China is among the countries that spend the highest share of their GDP on investments. Between 1980 and 2000, 30 to 40 percent of its economic output were invested, roughly on par with South Korea or Japan. While the latter’s investment spending ratio decreased in later years, China’s even grew, especially after the global financial crisis, peaking at staggering 47 percent of GDP in 2011.However, returns on those investments declined year by year, indicated by lower GDP growth rates. This resulted in a quickly growing debt burden, which reached nearly 285 percent of the GDP in 2023, up from only 135 percent in 2008. The Chinese government defined the goal to shift to consumption driven growth, but the transformation takes longer than expected.

The United Kingdom's economy grew by 1.1 percent in 2024, after a growth rate of 0.3 percent in 2023, 5.1 percent in 2022, 8.5 percent in 2021, and a record ten percent fall in 2020. During the provided time period, the biggest annual fall in gross domestic product before 2020 occurred in 2009, when the UK economy contracted by 4.6 percent at the height of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. Before 2021, the year with the highest annual GDP growth rate was 1973, when the UK economy grew by 6.5 percent. UK economy growing but GDP per capita falling In 2022, the UK's GDP per capita amounted to approximately 37,371 pounds, with this falling to 37,028 pounds in 2023, and 36,977 pounds in 2024. While the UK economy as a whole grew during this time, the UK's population grew at a faster rate, resulting in the negative growth in GDP per capita. This suggests the UK economy's struggles with productivity are not only stagnating, but getting worse. The relatively poor economic performance of the UK in recent years has not gone unnoticed by the electorate, with the economy consistently seen as the most important issue for voters since 2022. Recent shocks to UK economy In the second quarter of 2020, the UK economy shrank by a record 20.3 percent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there was a relatively swift economic recovery initially, the economy has struggled to grow much beyond its pre-pandemic size, and was only around 3.1 percent larger in December 2024, when compared with December 2019. Although the labor market has generally been quite resilient during this time, a long twenty-month period between 2021 and 2023 saw prices rise faster than wages, and inflation surge to a high of 11.1 percent in October 2022.