Answer:
The last recession was deemed after the fact to have begun in December 2007. It's more accurate to say that the previous economic recovery ended in December 2007, since the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research "determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy" that month. But the general custom is to date the start of a recession to the previous business cycle's peak, so December 2007 it is, meaning that this business cycle has just wrapped up its 10th year.
Most of the economic data from the end of 2017 isn't available yet, so one cannot do a full 10-year retrospective. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did release its December jobs report last Friday, though, so that's a good place to start. Yes, this last recession was especially awful. That's why they call it the Great Recession! The subsequent jobs recovery has been long and steady, and by this point has far outdistanced the recovery of the 2000s. But it's been weaker than the jobs recoveries of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Part of that weakness can be explained by slowing population growth, which exerts a drag on job growth.The unemployment rate has fallen more over the past 10 years than during any other post-1970 business cycle, and is now almost as low as in the boom times of the turn of the millennium. Then again, the unemployment rate, as President Donald Trump complained repeatedly during his campaign but has for some strange reason gone silent about since, is a flawed measure. It counts only people who are actively looking for jobs, meaning that those who have given up are ignored.