2  The United States has experienced only two relatively mild recessions since 1984, compared with four recessions - two of them quite deep - in the fifteen years before 1984.
Indeed, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research’s monthly business cycle chronology, which covers the period since the Civil War, the 120-month expansion of the 1990s was the longest recession-free period the United States has enjoyed, and the 92-month expansion of the 1980s was the third longest such period.