The economic situation in the U.S. in 2008 was a recession, not a depression.
Fueled by the housing market collapse, the Great Recession was the worst economic downturn to hit the U.S. economy since the Great Depression. However, economists largely agree that it did not flare into a depression.
This is in part because it lasted about a year and a half â December 2007 to June 2009 â whereas the Great Depression lasted years and saw much more substantial drops in the stock market and GDP and had much higher rates of unemployment, poverty, homelessness and bankruptcies, among other factors.