Here we are seven years after the recession has ended, Which some say it never did end. The current stretch of economic gains has yielded less growth than much shorter business cycles. In fact according to the terms of average annual growth, the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949 which means the economy has grown at a 2.1% annual rate since the U.S. recovery began in mid-2009, according to gross-domestic-product data the Commerce Department released Friday.  This information comes on the heels of a recent report that the percentage of Americans that own a home has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded. The non-seasonally adjusted homeownership rate fell to just 62.9 percent, which was exactly where it was at when the U.S. Census began publishing this measurement back in 1965.
Excerpt From The Wall Street Journal:
The prior expansion, from 2001 through 2007, was the only other business cycle of the past 11 when the economy didn’t grow at least 3% a year, on average. Total growth this expansion ranks just 8th of the past 11 cycles. The U.S. economy, at the end of June, was 15.5% larger than it was when the recession ended in 2009. The current expansion remains smaller than the one during Richard Nixon‘s administration. And that 16% expansion lasted just three years. The economy grew 18% from 2001 through 2007. It grew 52% from 1961 through 1969.