Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve in the U.S., lower the cost of borrowing to encourage businesses and consumers to take loans, invest, and spend more. Lower interest rates make mortgages, car loans, and business loans more affordable, boosting economic activity. Excessive corporate or consumer debt can strain financial institutions.

Government Revenue Decline

Your life would change dramatically if the United States were to experience an economic downturn on the scale of the Great Depression. The stock market would drop by 50%, and it would take decades, not months, to recover. While painful and brought on by unique economic events, recessions are also considered a normal part of the economic cycle. The last recession was relatively short, brought on by the pandemic and lasting only two months. Before that, the Great Recession lasted from 2008 to 2009 and was triggered in large part by the bursting housing bubble. Unlike depressions, recessions are a normal part of the business cycle.

Reduced Business Investments

By implementing sound monetary policies, regulating financial institutions, promoting economic diversification, and encouraging responsible borrowing and lending, economies can become more resilient to downturns. Technological advancements and data-driven economic forecasting also allow policymakers to identify warning signs early and implement preventive strategies before a crisis deepens. While recessions cannot be entirely eliminated, strong fiscal policies, global trade stability, and adaptive economic planning can help minimize their impact and speed up recovery when they do occur. While both recessions and depressions refer to economic downturns, they differ in severity, duration, and overall impact on the economy. A recession is a temporary decline in economic activity, typically lasting a few months to a couple of years, whereas a depression is a more prolonged and severe economic collapse that can last for several years.

Improve your job skills, update your resume, and expand your professional network to increase your employability. Consider acquiring new certifications or learning in-demand skills. High-interest debt, such as credit card balances and personal loans, can become a burden during a recession. Pay down outstanding debts, consolidate loans if necessary, and avoid taking on new, unnecessary debt. Lowered incomes can significantly impact the economy in the long term, for example, undermining nutrition and making it more difficult for people to pursue a college education. Both of these adverse effects can impact productivity in the long run.

The average post-World War II business cycle lasted 65 months, according to the Congressional Research Service. The confidence of business executives and other key decision-makers in corporations substantially impacts the health of the economy. If these decision-makers become less confident, they could cut budgets, lay off workers, and potentially reduce expenditures on capital equipment to bolster profitability.

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Get your credit report and FICO® ScoreΘ for free from Experian to see where your credit stands, and take steps to improve your credit if necessary. Thankfully, we know enough about recessions and depressions to define some of their differences, as illustrated in the following table. The difference between a recession and a depression is that a depression is much more severe and longer lasting.

• Offer pros and cons are determined by our editorial team, based on independent research.
• Stick to a long-term financial plan and consider consulting a financial advisor before making major investment decisions.
• In 1973, oil and gasoline prices skyrocketed thanks to the OPEC oil embargo.
• A crash can scare consumers, who then buy less, and this triggers a recession.
• In addition, companies reduce capital equipment investment during recessions, decreasing productivity, which can, in turn, adversely impact salaries.

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Essential services such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure projects may face funding cuts, affecting overall public well-being. One common challenge investors encounter during economic downturns is the impact of falling asset values on their net worth. When the economy goes into recession, the value of assets held by everyday investors, like stocks and real estate, can decline substantially. Recessions impact almost every aspect of the economy, including consumer spending, mortgage interest rates, unemployment, and stock performance. When the NBER calculates the length of a recession, it marks the end of the recession as the moment in which the economy reaches its lowest point (the “trough”) and starts to expand again.

On average, NBER says that it identifies recessions between four and 21 months after the fact. “’Deep’ speaks to the magnitude of the downturn, ‘durable’ speaks to the length of time and ‘diffuse’ means that it must be widespread across the economy,” says Wolla. The pivotal discoveries, visionary inventors and natural phenomena that impacted history. Kimberly Amadeo has 20 years of experience in economic analysis and business strategy. The Experian Smart Money™ Debit Card is issued by Community Federal Savings Bank (CFSB), pursuant to a license from Mastercard International. GDP, which measures the total value of finished goods and services during a specific time frame, is a leading indicator of the economy’s health.

While a recession is often limited to a single country, a depression is usually severe enough to have global impacts. Governments and economists continuously analyze economic indicators such as GDP growth, unemployment rates, and consumer spending to adjust policies accordingly. Flexibility in decision-making is crucial because what works in one recession may not work in another. Economists use data-driven approaches to ensure policies remain effective and responsive to changing conditions.

Since the Great Depression, the US has experienced 14 recessions, the last of which occurred in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A recession can be a precursor to a depression if the US economy continues to be unstable and underlying issues are not addressed. But in most cases, a recession doesn’t lead to an economic depression. Unfortunately, NBER isn’t able to flag the moment that a recession begins. In fact, NBER will only identify a recession after it has ended and the economy has officially begun to expand again.

While recessions are a natural part of the economic cycle, early warning signs can help businesses, investors, and policymakers take proactive steps to mitigate their impact. By closely monitoring economic data, it’s possible to identify patterns that signal an approaching recession. When businesses anticipate a slowdown, they cut jobs, leading to rising unemployment. As people lose income, they spend less, which further weakens economic activity and can push the economy into a recession. A recession is a significant period of economic decline, typically when the economy shrinks. A recession is also defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, but many economists view a recession as more widespread and requiring a significant rise in unemployment.

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• Essential services such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure projects may face funding cuts, affecting overall public well-being.
• Recessions are a normal part of the business cycle and occur every 5 to 10 years, while depressions are rare.
• It started with a recession, where the country saw spending decline and subsequent manufacturing decline, but before long had evolved into a depression that rippled out across the world.

Ensure you have a good credit score to qualify for better lending options. This can undermine the value of their retirement accounts and wealth outside these accounts, like in brokerage accounts. When investors feel less wealthy, they are less likely to spend, a phenomenon known as the wealth effect. This increased competition for jobs can undermine employees’ power to demand adequate compensation and, in turn, place downward pressure on salaries and wages.

Market volatility increases, and stock prices fall, reducing the value of investments and retirement savings. This can have a cascading effect on consumer confidence, as people see their portfolios shrink, prompting even more cautious financial behavior. A recession is a downtrend in the economy that can affect production and employment, and produce lower household income and spending. The effects of a depression are much more severe, characterized by widespread unemployment and major pauses in economic activity. Recessions can also be more localized, while depressions can have global reach.

Both consumers and businesses cut down on spending, and the economy goes into recession. A common rule of thumb to describe a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Governments often introduce stimulus programs to boost demand and create jobs. Investments in infrastructure projects, public services, and social programs inject money into the economy, leading to job creation and increased consumer spending. Examples include road construction, education programs, and healthcare funding, which generate employment and improve public services simultaneously. One of the first steps taken during a recession is reducing interest rates.

Most recessions last about a year and result in moderate economic losses equivalent to 2 percent or less of GDP. But forex trading signals depending on the cause and conditions of the recession, the economic impact can be much more severe. Consumers will stop buying and businesses will lay off workers when there’s no confidence in the future. These situations create a downward spiral of unemployment, loan defaults, and bankruptcies.

When most economists talk about a depression, they include the entire period from the initial shock until the economy returns to some semblance of normalcy. The NBER does not have a separate formula for identifying a depression and there is no clear dividing line between a recession and a depression. Instead, economists usually reserve the term “depression” for a truly severe and long-lasting period of economic decline. The Great Depression is the clearest example of the massive difference in magnitude between a recession—even a bad one like the Great Recession—and a depression. But the worst recession in recent memory was the 18-month “Great Recession” of 2007 to 2009.

During an asset bubble, the prices of investments like tech stocks in the dot-com era or real estate before the Great Recession (housing bubble) rise rapidly. Artificially inflated demand drives prices stemming from overly optimistic expectations of future asset values. Over the course of a business cycle, GDP might contract for a period of time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a recession. You may be worried about losing your job and being able to pay your bills — or you may be alarmed at just how abruptly that little red line that represents your investment portfolio has dropped. While the economic future is always uncertain, central banks like the Federal Reserve have learned important lessons from cataclysmic events like the Great Depression. In a recession, the financial toll on households and businesses is significant, but manageable.