Following the bursting of the housing bubble in mid-2007, and the housing market correction and subprime mortgage crisis the following year, the United States entered a severe recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) dates the beginning of the recession as December 2007. According to the Department of Labor, roughly 8.7 million jobs were shed from February 2008 to February 2010, and GDP contracted by 5.1%, making the Great Recession the worst since the Great Depression. Unemployment rose from 4.7% in November 2007 to peak at 10% in October of 2009.