Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. This article is more than 9 years old. The Great Recession and the Great Depression are the fallout of the exact same economic phenomenon and are only different in a few (minor) respects.
What was the cause of the 2001 recession?
And the 2001 recession came after the dotcom bubble burst. America’s 2008-09 Great Recession, by contrast, was caused by a crisis stemming from overleveraged financial institutions.
What was the cause of the US recession after World War 2?
All recessions differ in terms of their proximate cause. Several post-World War II recessions in the United States followed monetary-policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve to control rising inflation. The deep recessions of 1973-75 and 1981-82 followed large oil shocks (when the economy relied more heavily on energy imports than it does now).
What was the unemployment rate in the Great Depression?
Lots of folks compare unemployment rates. They say, unemployment was 25% in the Depression and only 10% in the GR. First of all, the definition of employment has changed in the survey literature over time with the 1930s definition being far broader.
Is the U.S.economy stronger than during the Great Depression?
But even before the jobs report came out, other measures of the health of the economy were indicating that the U.S. economy was considerably stronger than during the Depression. Here’s a tour of the data.
What was the Consumer Price Index during the Great Depression?
In addition to large declines in economic activity and employment, the price level also fell considerably during the Great Depression, as shown in Figure 4. At the business cycle trough in March 1933, the consumer price index (CPI) was 27 percent below its August 1929 level.
