The U.S. recovery from the Great Depression was nearly as exceptional as the Depression itself. When Franklin Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the unemployment rate was 21 percent, real GNP per capita was lower than it had been in 1907, and much of the banking system had collapsed.1 Seven years later, in 1940, the unemployment rate had fallen to 9.5 percent and GNP per capita had grown 54 percent. Productivity had advanced at an unprecedented pace (Field 2011). But recovery had not been uniform. It was interrupted by a severe recession in 1937/38 in which the unemployment rate rose more than 3 percentage points.