How did you think the US got out of the Great Depression?
A lot of people say the New Deal, but that was only part of it, and in fact by 1937 FDR was on the verge of reintroducing austerity again.
The war economy during WWII got the US out of the Great Depression. Every single automobile plant in America was turned into a war factory overnight. Record unemployment fell to zero, and the American citizens registered one of the highest increase in living standards soon after the Great Depression that went well into the 1950s and 60s, one that would not be repeated in their history again.
You see, when a state puts in a huge order, military or not, it is spending a lot of money out of thin air. Those money spent will naturally flow into the hands of the companies, and then the workers they hired in the sector. With more income to spend, they will go to the local grocery stores and buy more stuff on the way home. This drives up demand and stimulates the local economy.
It doesn’t where the money is spent on. You can spend a huge ton of money on military but the excess money will eventually circulate into the economy itself.
The problem with Western neoliberal economies is that most of those money went to the stock market, real estate (including when you’re paying rent), debt repayment instead of going into the real sector of the economy.
Russia’s manufacturing PMI index is on a 18-year record high.
This goes beyond just regaining lost ground, this is a dramatic shift towards re-industrialization to curb the effects of foreign sanctions, including the establishing of new supply chain and trade routes (most notably towards the Far East with China, and with Iran) that naturally stimulate growth in previously neglected regions.
One sector that has slowly been declining though, is the mining industry. All other metrics including industrial output, construction, freight turnover, retail, agriculture, electrical consumption (a metric for economic activity) etc. are all trending up.