Recessions and recoveries: a historical perspective (updated March 9)

NIESR estimates that GDP grew by 0.1% in the three months to February 2012.  Output remains roughly flat.  Here is a further updated version of NIESR’s chart showing the path of recession and recovery in various previous downturns.  The chart shows that this “depression” – defined, admittedly somewhat arbitrarily, as the time period during which output remains below its previous peak, shown as the X-axis above – is now longer than that experienced during the Great Depression, and is not likely to end any time soon. It also shows how what was initially a reasonably strong, albeit patchy, recovery stalled in the autumn of 2010; since then there has been very little growth .