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.

Graph and download economic data for Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator (JHDUSRGDPBR) from Q4 1967 to Q4 2024 about recession indicators, GDP, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Period following the Peak through the Trough (USRECD) from 1854-12-01 to 2025-07-10 about peak, trough, recession indicators, and USA.

United States - Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator was 0.00000 +1 or 0 in July of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator reached a record high of 1.00000 in April of 1969 and a record low of 0.00000 in January of 1968. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on June of 2025.

By April 2026, it is projected that there is a probability of ***** percent that the United States will fall into another economic recession. This reflects a significant decrease from the projection of the preceding month.

United States - GDP-Based Recession Indicator Index was 6.80000 Percentage Points in October of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - GDP-Based Recession Indicator Index reached a record high of 100.00000 in April of 2020 and a record low of 0.00000 in July of 2020. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - GDP-Based Recession Indicator Index - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

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.

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.

Home prices fell by 16.7 percent during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 in the United States. However, such a significant decrease in prices did not happen in the other four recessions which have occurred since 1980.

United States - Smoothed U.S. Recession Probabilities was 0.48% in April of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Smoothed U.S. Recession Probabilities reached a record high of 100.00 in March of 2020 and a record low of 0.00 in November of 1967. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Smoothed U.S. Recession Probabilities - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on June of 2025.

NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Peak through the Trough was 0.00000 +1 or 0 in April of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Peak through the Trough reached a record high of 1.00000 in December of 1854 and a record low of 0.00000 in January of 1855. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Peak through the Trough - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

The Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008), which began due to the collapse of the U.S. housing market, had a negative effect in many regions across the globe. The global recession which followed the crisis in 2008 and 2009 showed how interdependent and synchronized many of the world's economies had become, with the largest advanced economies showing very similar patterns of negative GDP growth during the crisis. Among the largest emerging economies (commonly referred to as the 'E7'), however, a different pattern emerged, with some countries avoiding a recession altogether. Some commentators have particularly pointed to 2008-2009 as the moment in which China emerged on the world stage as an economic superpower and a key driver of global economic growth. The Great Recession in the developing world While some countries, such as Russia, Mexico, and Turkey, experienced severe recessions due to their connections to the United States and Europe, others such as China, India, and Indonesia managed to record significant economic growth during the period. This can be partly explained by the decoupling from western financial systems which these countries undertook following the Asian financial crises of 1997, making many Asian nations more wary of opening their countries to 'hot money' from other countries. Other likely explanations of this trend are that these countries have large domestic economies which are not entirely reliant on the advanced economies, that their export sectors produce goods which are inelastic (meaning they are still bought during recessions), and that the Chinese economic stimulus worth almost 600 billion U.S. dollars in 2008/2009 increased growth in the region.

From the Summer of 2007 until the end of 2009 (at least), the world was gripped by a series of economic crises commonly known as the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008) and the Great Recession (2008-2009). The financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market, which caused panic on Wall Street, the center of global finance in New York. Due to the outsized nature of the U.S. economy compared to other countries and particularly the centrality of U.S. finance for the world economy, the crisis spread quickly to other countries, affecting most regions across the globe. By 2009, global GDP growth was in negative territory, with international credit markets frozen, international trade contracting, and tens of millions of workers being made unemployed.

Global similarities, global differences

Since the 1980s, the world economy had entered a period of integration and globalization. This process particularly accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War (1947-1991). This was the period of the 'Washington Consensus', whereby the U.S. and international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF promoted policies of economic liberalization across the globe. This increasing interdependence and openness to the global economy meant that when the crisis hit in 2007, many countries experienced the same issues. This is particularly evident in the synchronization of the recessions in the most advanced economies of the G7. Nevertheless, the aggregate global GDP number masks the important regional differences which occurred during the recession. While the more advanced economies of North America, Western Europe, and Japan were all hit hard, along with countries who are reliant on them for trade or finance, large emerging economies such as India and China bucked this trend. In particular, China's huge fiscal stimulus in 2008-2009 likely did much to prevent the global economy from sliding further into a depression. In 2009, while the United States' GDP sank to -2.6 percent, China's GDP, as reported by national authorities, was almost 10 percent.

This paper presents a new nonlinear time series model that captures a post-recession bounce-back in the level of aggregate output. While a number of studies have examined this type of business cycle asymmetry using recession-based dummy variables and threshold models, we relate the bounce-back effect to an endogenously estimated unobservable Markov-switching state variable. When the model is applied to US real GDP, we find that the Markov-switching regimes are closely related to NBER-dated recessions and expansions. Also, the Markov-switching form of nonlinearity is statistically significant and the bounce-back effect is large, implying that the permanent effects of recessions are small. Meanwhile, having accounted for the bounce-back effect, we find little or no remaining serial correlation in the data, suggesting that our model is sufficient to capture the defining features of US business cycle dynamics. When the model is applied to other countries, we find larger permanent effects of recessions.

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Modeling and predicting U.S. recessions using machine learning techniques

As variáveis do FRED-MD como preditivas e a USREC como alvo (período de 1979-2019)

Diversos Modelos: probit, logit, LDA, árvores Naive-Bayes Algumas variáveis tiveram que ser transformadas em mensais (interpolação cúbica)

128 varibles. Grupos: Output and Income Labor Market Consumption and Orders Orders and Inventories Money and Credit Interest Rates and Exchange Rates Prices Stock Market

Graph and download economic data for Real-time Sahm Rule Recession Indicator (SAHMREALTIME) from Dec 1959 to Jun 2025 about recession indicators, academic data, and USA.

The statistic shows the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States from 1987 to 2024, with projections up until 2030. The gross domestic product of the United States in 2024 amounted to around 29.18 trillion U.S. dollars. The United States and the economy The United States’ economy is by far the largest in the world; a status which can be determined by several key factors, one being gross domestic product: A look at the GDP of the main industrialized and emerging countries shows a significant difference between US GDP and the GDP of China, the runner-up in the ranking, as well as the followers Japan, Germany and France. Interestingly, it is assumed that China will have surpassed the States in terms of GDP by 2030, but for now, the United States is among the leading countries in almost all other relevant rankings and statistics, trade and employment for example. See the U.S. GDP growth rate here. Just like in other countries, the American economy suffered a severe setback when the economic crisis occurred in 2008. The American economy entered a recession caused by the collapsing real estate market and increasing unemployment. Despite this, the standard of living is considered quite high; life expectancy in the United States has been continually increasing slightly over the past decade, the unemployment rate in the United States has been steadily recovering and decreasing since the crisis, and the Big Mac Index, which represents the global prices for a Big Mac, a popular indicator for the purchasing power of an economy, shows that the United States’ purchasing power in particular is only slightly lower than that of the euro area.

The 2020 recession did not follow the trend of previous recessions in the United States because only six months elapsed between the yield curve inversion and the 2020 recession. Over the last five decades, 12 months, on average, has elapsed between the initial yield curve inversion and the beginning of a recession in the United States. For instance, the yield curve inverted initially in January 2006, which was 22 months before the start of the 2008 recession. A yield curve inversion refers to the event where short-term Treasury bonds, such as one or three month bonds, have higher yields than longer term bonds, such as three or five year bonds. This is unusual, because long-term investments typically have higher yields than short-term ones in order to reward investors for taking on the extra risk of longer term investments. Monthly updates on the Treasury yield curve can be seen here.

Recessions may disproportionally impact school districts, especially with established fiscal institutions and policies including balanced budget requirements, tax and expenditure limitations, and school finance reforms. Analyzing the Great Recession and school districts in the United States between 2003 and 2016, we estimate difference-in-differences models leveraging variation in state recession severity to evaluate revenue and expenditure impacts as well as measure differential recession effects for districts exposed to and not exposed to fiscal institutions and policies. While revenues and expenditures increased relative to pre-recession levels in all districts, increases are much larger in school districts with less severe than more severe recessions. Balance budget requirements exacerbate recession effects for low-income districts and local tax and expenditure limitations intensify recession effects for high-income districts. School finance reforms worsen recession effects for all districts. Our findings can aid districts in understanding potential recessionary impacts given their prior established fiscal policies and institutions.

We use the yield curve to predict future GDP growth and recession probabilities. The spread between short- and long-term rates typically correlates with economic growth. Predications are calculated using a model developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Released monthly.