The Recession of 1969–1970 was a relatively mild recession in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. According to the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

the recession lasted for 11 months, beginning in December 1969 and ending in November 1970, following an economic slump which began in 1968 and by the end of 1969 had become serious, thus ending the third longest economic expansion in U.S. history which had begun in February 1961 (only the 1990s and 2010s saw a longer period of growth). At the end of the expansion inflation was rising, possibly a result of increased

deficit spending Within the budgetary process, deficit spending is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue over a particular period of time, also called simply deficit, or budget deficit; the opposite of budget surplus. The term may be applied to the budget ...

during a period of

full employment Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or unemployment#Cyclical unemployment, deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely Structu ...

. This relatively mild recession coincided with an attempt to start closing the budget deficits of the Vietnam War (fiscal tightening) and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates (monetary tightening). During this relatively mild recession, the

Gross Domestic Product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a money, monetary Measurement in economics, measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjec ...

of the United States fell 0.6 percent. Though the recession ended in November 1970, the unemployment rate did not peak until the next month. In December 1970, the rate reached its height for the cycle of 6.1 percent.Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...

. Retrieved on September 19, 2009

References

Further reading