Answer:
Officially, the Great Recession lasted between December 2007 and June 2009, but it certainly seemed longer.
The economy crushed property and stock markets, destroyed $18.9 trillion of household wealth and destroyed over eight million jobs.
Explanation:
In December 2007, the Great Recession came to an end in June 2009, making the Great Recession the longest since World War II. The Great Recession was extremely extreme in a number of ways. Actual GDP decreased by 4.3% in 2009Q2, the biggest decline in the post-war era (based on the data of October 2013), as from its peak in 2007 Qu4. The figure was 4.3%. In December 2007, the unemployment rate was 5%, rising to 9.5% in June 2009 and a high of 10% in October 2009.
Simultaneously, the financial consequences of the Great Recession had outsized: the average home prices decreased by about 30 percent from the middle of 2006 to mid-2009, while the S&P 500 index decreased by 57 percent from its high in October 2007. Net values for US households and non-profit organizations dropped to $55 trillion in 2009, from a high of approximately $69 trillion in 2007.
