Great Depression

noun

1. the economic crisis and period of low business activity in the U.S. and other countries, roughly beginning with the stock-market crash in October, 1929, and continuing through most of the 1930s.

Depression, Great

1. The great slowdown in the American economy, the worst in the country's history, which began in 1929 and lasted until the early 1940s. Many banks and businesses failed, and millions of people lost their jobs. (See Dust Bowl; fireside chats; Hoovervilles; New Deal; Okies; Franklin D. Roosevelt; and stock market Crash of 1929.)

Example Sentences

The current merry-go-round was built in 1926 and relocated to Griffith Park in the depths of the Great Depression in 1937.

From Los Angeles Times

That version of the Fed proved unequal to managing macroeconomic policy as the Great Depression deepened.

From Los Angeles Times

During the Great Depression, the Reconstruction Finance Corp., a Hoover creation that lived well into Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, took preferred shares in numerous impaired banks in return for capital infusions they needed to survive.

From Los Angeles Times

The New Deal coalition under President Franklin Roosevelt managed to merge the party’s urban white ethnic base with an expert reformer class in Washington that defeated both the Great Depression and Nazi Germany.

From Salon

In the modern era, housing construction across Los Angeles peaked twice, once before the Great Depression and then in a postwar boom.

From Los Angeles Times

When To Use

When and what was the Great Depression?

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic crisis that lasted for much of the 1930s. It heavily impacted the United States, where millions of people faced unemployment, homelessness, and poverty.In economics, a depression is a period during which business, employment, and stock market values fall to very low levels for a significant amount of time (typically more than three years). The Great in Great Depression refers to the fact that it was the worst depression in U.S. history.The start of the Great Depression is often cited as the U.S. stock market crash of 1929, but its causes are complex. Its effects were also complex and widespread and are still discussed. Some can even be seen today in the form of government programs and agencies created to address the crisis at the time.