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1973–1975 recession

The 1973–1975 recession or 1970s recession was a period of economic stagnation in much of the Western world during the 1970s, putting an end to the overall post–World War II economic expansion. It differed from many previous recessions by involving stagflation, in which high unemployment and high inflation existed simultaneously. Among the causes were the 1973 oil crisis, the deficits of the Vietnam War under President Johnson, and the fall of the Bretton Woods system after the Nixon shock. The emergence of newly industrialized countries increased competition in the metal industry, triggering a steel crisis, where industrial core areas in North America and Europe were forced to re-structure. The 1973–74 stock market crash made the recession evident. The recession in the United States lasted from November 1973 (the Richard Nixon presidency) to March 1975 (the Gerald Ford presidency), and its effects on the US were felt through the Jimmy Carter presidency until the mid-term of Ronald Reagan's first term as president, characterized by low economic growth. Although the economy was expanding from 1975 to the first recession of the early 1980s, which began in January 1980, inflation remained extremely high until the early 1980s. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 2.3 million jobs were lost during the recession; at the time, this was a post-war record. Although the recession ended in March 1975, the unemployment rate did not peak for several months. In May 1975, the rate reached its height for the cycle of 9 percent. (Four cycles have had higher peaks than this: the late 2000s recession, where the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 in the United States; the early 1980s recession where unemployment peaked at 10.8% in November and December 1982; the Great Depression, where unemployment peaked at 25% in 1933; and the COVID-19 recession where unemployment peaked at 14.7% in 2020.) The recession also lasted from 1973–1975 in the United Kingdom. GDP declined by 3.9% depending on the source.

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The 1970s energy crisis occurred when the Western world, particularly the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, faced substantial petroleum shortages as well as elevated prices. The two worst crises of this period were the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis, when, respectively, the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution triggered interruptions in Middle Eastern oil exports. The crisis began to unfold as petroleum production in the United States and some other parts of the world peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
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