Is seven years enough time to show a recovery form a recession? Often, but not always. What went on to cause the 2007 recession was similar to what caused the lost decade in Japan in terms of money creation and destruction. It was actually probably worse in terms of the fundamental impacts, globally, on the banking infrastructure.
While going by the stock market, we had a big rally and then moved sideways for a couple years before stepping in the giant pile of dogshit that is 2020. However in terms of jobs and just general quality of life it looked like we were finally getting a proper recovery. Like unemployment out-competing a lot of jobs for compensation.
Will we get a depression? Possibly. A lot of damage was done. However a lot of numbers are being inflated by unprecedented intervention. Heck, I still get spammed with realtor housing reports after my last refi, and they went from forecasting -1.6% housing prices in the next 12 months to 2.2%. I can tell you almost all the inventory went poof. In a town of 50k+ people, last I looked we had all of 24 homes listed. did that contract because of people fleeing NYC? People shifting form trying to sell to strategic default? Both?
My 401 went from being in the negative to being up 5% for the year.
And like it or not, the fed and the government are moving to embrace modern monetary theory. Not the lefty, you can print money for everything until everyone is rich misunderstanding of it, but more so the textbook understanding. Which is that so long as your printing doesn't create additional available money, or inflation is a desired outcome, then you can print up money and not care about debt.
The government seems ot be happy to do it where there is a lot of destruction of money going on. QE and the UEI bailout are examples where it hasn't seemed to create widespread inflation.
It's some weird shit going on. It'll likely get weirder.