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The National Bureau of Economic Research, the date-keeper for U.S. business cycles, has declared February 2020 as the official end of the U.S. economic expansion and beginning of the current recession.

"The expansion lasted 128 months, the longest in the history of U.S. business cycles dating back to 1854," according to the NBER. The previous record was 120 months, running from March 1991 to March 2001.

The NBER noted that February 2020 marked the peak for payrolls and the low in the national unemployment rate as well as the peak in monthly real personal spending, "the most comprehensive monthly measure of aggregate expenditures," and in aggregate real income. The latter two contribute to quarterly GDP reports.

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Bernice Napach

Bernice Napach is a senior writer at ThinkAdvisor covering financial markets and asset managers, robo-advisors, college planning and retirement issues. She has worked at Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, Reuters, Investor's Business Daily and The Bond Buyer and has written articles for The New York Times, TheStreet.com, The Star-Ledger, The Record, Variety and Worth magazine. Bernice has a Bachelor of Science in Social Welfare from SUNY at Stony Brook.