Great Recession in the United States

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In the United States, the Great Recession was a severe financial crisis combined with a deep recession. While the recession officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, it took many years for the economy to recover to pre-crisis levels of employment and output. This slow recovery was due in part to households and financial institutions paying off debts accumulated in the years preceding the crisis^[1] along with restrained government spending following initial stimulus efforts.^[2] It followed the bursting of the housing bubble, the housing market correction and subprime mortgage crisis.

According to the Department of Labor, roughly 8.7 million jobs (about 7%) were shed from February 2008 to February 2010, and real GDP contracted by 4.2% between Q4 2007 and Q2 2009, making the Great Recession the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The GDP bottom, or trough, was reached in the second quarter of 2009 (marking the technical end of the recession that is defined by "a period of falling economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales").^[3] Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP did not regain its pre-crisis (Q4 2007) peak level until Q3 2011.^[4] Unemployment rose from 4.7% in November 2007 to peak at 10% in October 2009, before returning steadily to 4.7% in May 2016.^[5] The total number of jobs did not return to November 2007 levels until May 2014.^[6] Some areas, such as jobs in public health, have not recovered as of 2023.^[7]

Households and non-profit organizations added approximately $8 trillion in debt during the 2000–2008 period (roughly doubling it and fueling the housing bubble), then reduced their debt level from the peak in Q3 2008 until Q3 2012, the only period this debt declined since at least the 1950s.^[8] However, the debt held by the public rose from 35% GDP in 2007 to 77% GDP by 2016, as the government spent more while the private sector (e.g., households and businesses, particularly the banking sector) reduced the debt burdens accumulated during the pre-recession decade.^[9][10] President Barack Obama declared the bailout measures started under the Bush administration and continued during his administration as completed and mostly profitable as of December 2014.^[11]