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This recession is the deepest in our lifetimes, the deepest since 1929. If you take the people thrown out of work in the 1982 recession, the 1991 recession, the 2001 recession, not only is this bigger, this is bigger than all of those combined.

The economy has barely recovered from the so-called 'Great Recession', with a 2 percent annual rate of growth since mid-2009. Peak worker wages, business investment, and productivity all occurred around the year 2000.

In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.

Labor force participation peaked in early 2000, so its decline began well before the Great Recession. A portion of that decline clearly relates to the aging of the baby boom generation. But the pace of decline accelerated with the recession.

There are always, of course, job losses of a cyclical nature in a recession.

There is always some chance of recession in any year. But the evidence suggests that expansions don't die of old age.

The unemployment rate has effectively not gone down from where it was at the peak of the recession. The only reason it's gone technically from 10 percent to 8 percent is so many people are discouraged and have quit work.

It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were going to turn out.

The crisis and recession have led to very low interest rates, it is true, but these events have also destroyed jobs, hamstrung economic growth and led to sharp declines in the values of many homes and businesses.