"The Great Recession, as officially dated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, lasted from December 2007 through June 2009. It was the most severe recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with both gross domestic product (GDP) and the number of jobs declining by about 6 percent and median family incomes by about 8 percent. It lasted longer (18 months) than any recent recession and was precipitated by a collapse in housing values and stock prices that negatively affected the economic well-being and security of most U.S. families.
Although the recession officially ended four years ago, the economy has yet to fully recover. In July 2013, the national unemployment rate was 7.4 percent, below the October 2009 peak rate of 10.0 percent, but well above the prerecession November 2007 rate of 4.7 percent. These monthly, point-in-time unemployment rates understate the percentage of workers who experienced any unemployment during the Great Recession era. That is, in any month, some of the unemployed find new jobs while other workers are laid off, so the number experiencing unemployment increases over time even if the flows into and out of jobs leave the unemployment rate unchanged. Farber (2011) documents, that 16 percent of all workers experienced a job loss at some time during the three-year period from 2007 to 2009, well above the average monthly unemployment rate during these three years -9.3 percent.
A return to normalcy in the job market is still several years in the future. In February 2013, the Congressional Budget Office (2013) projected that calendar year “2014 will be the sixth consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 7,5 percent of the labor force -the longest such period in the past 70 years”. In addition, many home owners, particularly the long-term unemployed, lost their homes during the foreclosure crisis, …"

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