Though depression has visited the world economy only once in 1929, economists have pin-pointed enough number of traits to recognise it. The major traits of depression could be as given below:

1. an extremely low aggregate demand in the economy causes activities to decelerate;
2. the inflation being comparatively lower;
3. the employment avenues start shrinking forcing unemployment rate to grow fast;
4. to keep the business going, production houses go for forced labour-cuts or retrenchment (to cut down production cost and be competitive in the market,) etc.

The economic situations become so chaotic in the phase of depression that governments have almost no control over the economy. The Great Depression of 1929 gave rise to the ideas of strong government Intervention in the economy, such as deficit financing, monetary management, etc.

Source: ForumIAS