We now need 2 separate concepts of recession.

“Total GDP recession” is the conventional one. “Actual people recession” is the one that matters to almost everyone. The rationale is that all of the “growth” after the 2001 recession, and this one as well, is in the upper few percent of the income distribution, or in corporate profits. Median income, for example, has been approximately stagnant or declining for a decade. Much more important to “the 99%” is what happens to their share of national income – which is much slower to recover. (If you adjust for increasing health care costs, then median income is doing even worse – but that’s another story.) 

(This interpretation is my own. I got the graph link from Andy McAfee