All 5 Uses

recession
in
Gone Girl
(Edited)

But the only houses for rent were clustered in this failed development: a miniature ghost town of bank-owned, recession-busted, price-reduced mansions, a neighborhood that closed before it ever opened.
p. 4.4

recession = a period when the economy does poorly
I won't make that mistake again: The once plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled—by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, rain sucks!
p. 8.2
Then the recession hit, washed away the Riverway store by store until the whole mall finally went bust.
p. 72.3 *
The recession is supposed to be winding down, but no one seems to know that.
p. 83.4
The recession had ended the mall.
p. 108.4

Definitions:

(1) (recession as in: economic recession)
a period when the economy does poorly

Most people think of a recession as any period of two consecutive quarters of shrinking, real GDP.

Officially, a nonprofit organization, the National Bureau of Economic Research, determines when the U.S. economy has had a recession. Their proclamation is often a year after the recession started and almost never fails to call a recession indicated by the 2-quarter rule-of-thumb.
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
There are several less common meanings for recession. They include: a small concavity; or the withdrawal of the clergy and choir from the chancel to the vestry at the end of a church service; or the act of becoming more distant.