Early 1990s recession

The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incumbent president George H. W. Bush. The recession also included the resignation of Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, the reduction of active companies by 15% and unemployment up to nearly 20% in Finland, civil disturbances in the United Kingdom and the growth of discount stores in the United States and beyond.

Primary factors believed to have led to the recession include the following: restrictive monetary policy enacted by central banks, primarily in response to inflation concerns, the loss of consumer and business confidence as a result of the 1990 oil price shock, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent decrease in defense spending, the savings and loan crisis and a slump in office construction resulting from overbuilding during the 1980s. The US economy returned to 1980s level growth by 1993 and global GDP growth by 1994.

Canada's economy is considered to have been in recession for two full years in the early 1990s, specifically from April 1990 to April 1992. Canada's recession began about four months before that of the US, and was deeper, likely because of higher inflationary pressures in Canada, which prompted the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates to levels 5 to 6 percentage points higher than the corresponding rates in the US by early 1990.

Canada's economy began to weaken in the second quarter of 1989 as sharp cutbacks in manufacturing output reduced real GDP growth to about 0.3% for each of the last three quarters of the year. Despite GDP growth being minimal, employment growth Canada-wide remained moderate throughout 1989 (although Ontario had a decline in employment in 1989) and there was a solid growth spurt (0.8%) in the first quarter of 1990. In April 1990, economic activity and employment both began substantial declines with the largest drops in real GDP, 1.2%, and employment, 1.1%, occurring in the first quarter of 1991. Both real GDP and employment bounced back in the second quarter of 1991, but then for a full year there was virtually no change in real GDP while employment levels continued to drop as most industries continued to cut output. Only in April 1992 did total employment begin to increase again with real GDP growing 0.4% thereby ending the recession. Technically, the moderate expansion in the second quarter of 1991 would qualify the contractions from April 1990 to March 1991 and July 1991 to April 1992 as two separate recessions, but the 1991 second quarter expansion was likely the result of pent up demand from the Gulf War and the introduction of the federal Goods and Services Tax early in the year severely suppressing consumer spending in the first quarter.

Overall real GDP growth for Canada was 2.3% for 1989, 0.16% for 1990, −2.09% for 1991, 0.90% for 1992, before increasing to 2.66% in 1993. The unemployment rate rose from 7.5% in 1989, to 10.3% in 1990, 10.3% in 1991, 11.2% in 1992, and 11.4% in 1993 before dropping to 10.3% in 1994. In fact, due to unemployment remaining at higher levels until early 1994, some sources assert the early 1990s recession lasted until February 1994 in Canada, as the percentage of the working age population (15–64) being employed continued to decline until the following month. The slow growth in employment following the end of the GDP contraction in April 1992 right through until 1995, is referred to as a "jobless recovery".

A key cause of the recession in Canada was inflation and Bank of Canada's resulting monetary policy. The inflation rate in Canada had remained in the 4% range between 1984 and 1988, but began to rise again in 1989, averaging 5.0% that year. Gordon Thiesen, asserted in 2001 when he was the Bank of Canada governor, that inflationary pressures in Canada were partly fueled by Canadians having had a greater "inflation psychology" than Americans, that is a higher propensity to spend now in the belief the price for the same product will be substantially higher in short period of time. To reduce inflation, the Bank of Canada raised its prime rate from 10% in 1986 and 1987, to 12.25% at the start of 1989, peaking at 14.75% in June 1990, thereby prompting Canadians to reduce spending, reduce borrowing and begin saving sooner and more greatly than Americans. Particularly hard hit were Canada's real estate markets, the building industry, especially factory construction, and consumer confidence.

Then in February 1991, the Bank of Canada and the Department of Finance announced their monetary policy would be governed by formal inflation targets, with a target of 3% for 1992. Inflation was contained to 4.8% in 1990, 5.6% in 1991 and then decreased to 1.5% in 1992 and 1.9 in 1993, well below the target of 3%. This suggests the Bank of Canada's restrictive monetary policy overshot its target, suppressing GDP and employment growth in 1992 and 1993 in what would normally have been an economic recovery period. In fact, complex macro-economic modelling undertaken estimates that "excessive monetary restraint" of the Bank of Canada reduced real GDP growth by 1.5 percentage points in 1990, 2.9 percentage points in 1991 and 4.0 percentage points in 1993.

Another cause of Canada's recession were several tax increases instituted by the federal government between 1989 and 1991. These increases related to sales, excise and payroll taxes were modelled to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.6, 2.4 and 5.1 percentage points, respectively, in 1990, 1991 and 1992, although if these tax increases had not been implemented the federal government's national debt would have increased a significant amount. A third, less important factor in Canada's recession was the weakness of the US economy at the time, which was calculated to have had the effect of reducing Canada's economic growth by .6, 2.2 and 1.1 percentage points in 1990, 1991 and 1992.