economyjmc

=Maneging the Economy= When the war began, the U.S. economy was in recession. But a 44-month economic boom ensued, first as Europeans began purchasing U.S. goods for the war and later as the United States itself joined the battle. "The long period of U.S. neutrality made the ultimate conversion of the economy to a wartime basis. The U.S. federal spending which shifted national production from civilian to war goods. Between 1914 and 1918, some 3 million people were added to the military and half a million to the government. Overall, unemployment declined from 7.9 percent to 1.4 percent in this period, in part because workers were drawn in to new manufacturing jobs and because the military draft removed from many young men from the civilian labor force.