When Was the Shortest Recession in Your Lifetime?

7/20/2021

Economy

0 min read



	Image Credit: Lauri Sten (Flickr)

When Was the Shortest Recession in Your Lifetime?

The U.S. officially emerged from a recession in April 2020. After clarity, confidence, and leadership seemed to calm markets following the introduction of the novel coronavirus on our shores, the contraction ended within two months. This officially makes it the shortest recession on record.

The announcement Monday (July 19, 2021) from the National Bureau of Economic Research also declares April as the official start of the recovery

The recession ended the country’s longest recorded economic expansion, which began in June 2009 and lasted 128 months, according to the bureau’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, the accepted arbiter of recession dates.

The group typically waits until a business cycle is well underway before declaring it has started. It took more than a year to make official our most recent recessions duration.