Great Recession

The Great Recession was a period of general economic decline observed in world markets beginning around the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The exact scale and timing of the recession, and whether it has ended, is debated and varied from country to country. In terms of overall impact, the International Monetary Fund concluded that it was the worst global recession since World War II. According to the US National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of US recessions) the US recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, and thus extended over 19 months. The Great Recession was related to the financial crisis of 2007–08 and U.S. subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–09.

Terminology

There are two senses of the word "recession": a less precise sense, referring broadly to "a period of reduced economic activity"; and the academic sense used most often in economics, which is defined operationally, referring specifically to the contraction phase of a business cycle, with two or more consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. Under the academic definition, the recession ended in the United States in June or July 2009. However, in the broader, lay sense of the word, many people use the term to refer to the ongoing hardship (in the same way that the term "Great Depression" is also popularly used).