As chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1979 to 1987, Volcker pursued policies that ended the inflation crisis of the 1970s by tightening the growth of the money supply rather than targeting interest rates. His remedy worked — inflation fell from 13.6 percent in 1980 to 3.2 percent by 1983 — but it came with a high cost: a significant recession, with unemployment levels that had not been seen since the Great Depression.