No, we are not headed for another Great Depression.

Reporters, journalists, and even some economists are feeding on the concerns of citizens with all the talk of another depression.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, we officially entered a recession last December.

However, several key people from the business community continually tell me how they have never seen anything like this before. What does this statement actually mean? Each recession is different in some way from past recessions; as they are often set off by a unique set of events. The current situation is no different.

I will present data with comparisons to previous recessions and even the Great Depression. If you think I have missed a key economic indicator that tells a different story, then e-mail me.

- Unemployment rate. The current unemployment rate is 6.5 percent compared to the peak unemployment rate during the depression years of 25 percent. During the 1990-91 recession, the unemployment rate reached 8 percent. We reached double digits during the early 1980s.

- Inflation. Today's inflation rate is important as it relates to monetary policy. With the recent surge in oil and gas prices (which have now fallen substantially), inflation was a concern. The current inflation rate is below 4 percent, compared to the 1980s when inflation was around 15 percent. A side note, gas prices today are below $2 a gallon, whereas in the early 1980s gas prices were approximately $3.50 in today's dollars.

- Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We recently heard GDP dropped 0.5 percent on an annualized basis in third quarter 2008. By the way, second quarter 2008 GDP increased 2.8 percent. I expect it will continue to decline through 2008 and halfway through 2009 (as many other economists are forecasting). In the depression era, real GDP dropped nearly 30 percent.

This current situation may be due to the banking sector (via the housing market bust). Here is some banking data to ponder. According to the FDIC, the number of troubled banks today is less than 200. In the early 1990s, the number of troubled banks approached 1,500. And during the depression period, total bank failures approached 10,000.

This does not account for the assets of these banks, which is also a very telling story. The assets of the troubled banks today account for roughly 1 percent of total commercial bank assets. Compare this to 1991, where troubled banks' assets accounted for 25 percent of total bank assets.

We were 25 times worse off in 1991 than we are today. We were in a recession in 1990-91, as we are today, but not a depression.

Mark A. Thompson is the Cree-Walker Professor of Business Administration at Augusta State University and writes a daily blog at http://augustaeconomics.blogspot.com. He can be reached at mthompson@aug.edu.