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

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. 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 co ...

, the recession lasted for 11 months, beginning in December 1969 and ending in November 1970. It followed an economic slump that began in 1968. 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 budg ...

during a period of

full employment Full employment is an economic situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may ...

. This recession coincided with an attempt to start closing the budget deficits of the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

(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 monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...

of the United States fell 0.6 percentage points. 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 government of the United States, U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics, labor economics and ...

. Retrieved on September 19, 2009

References

Further reading