It took about 10 years for the economy to recover from the Great Recession.

The claim is that the US economy took about 10 years to recover from the Great Recession (which began in December 2007). Judge it as of 2020-03-30. 'About 10 years' allows roughly 8 to 12 years. True: widely used recovery measures, such as the employment-population ratio for prime-age workers, the unemployment rate returning to its pre-recession level, median household income, or broad assessments by economists, put full recovery around 2016 to 2019. Mostly true: some major measures fit about 10 years while others (e.g. GDP or total payrolls) recovered much sooner, and the claim is a reasonable reading of the broader recovery. Mixed: the main measures are evenly split between recovery in a few years and recovery in about a decade. Mostly false: most standard measures (GDP regained its peak in 2011, payrolls in 2014) show recovery well under 8 years, with only fringe measures supporting about 10. False: all reasonable measures show recovery far shorter (e.g. under 5 years) or far longer (well over 12 years).

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Great Recession, great recovery? Trends from the Current Population Survey U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Monthly Labor Review) · 4 June 2018

   “By December 2017, unemployment rates had returned to prerecession lows for people of all ages, genders, major race and ethnicity groups, and levels of educational attainment.”

2. E2 Great Recession, great recovery? Trends from the Current Population Survey U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Monthly Labor Review) · 4 June 2018

   “From 2014 to 2017, the ratio increased by about 1 percentage point, to 60.1 percent. However, the ratio remained about 3 percentage points below its prerecession level.”

3. E3 Employment Rate Up Again, but Lags Pre-Recession High Pew Research Center · 1 March 2018

   “Despite rising for years, the prime-age employment rate in 2017 was still below 2007’s level of 79.9 percent.”

4. E4 The Great Recession and Its Aftermath Federal Reserve History (Federal Reserve System) · 1 December 2011

   “Economic growth was only moderate—averaging about 2 percent in the first four years of the recovery—and the unemployment rate, particularly the rate of long-term unemployment, remained at historically elevated levels.”

A BLS analysis (E1) reports that unemployment rates had returned to their pre-recession lows by December 2017, about 10 years after the recession began in December 2007. That fits "about 10 years." The same analysis (E2) and Pew (E3) report that the overall and prime-age employment rates were still below their pre-recession levels in 2017, so by those measures recovery was not complete until around 10 years or later. The evidence does not show when these employment measures returned to their pre-recession levels, so it cannot say whether they fall within the 8-to-12-year range. The Federal Reserve essay (E4) describes a slow recovery with high unemployment in its early years. The evidence supports the claim as a fair reading of the broader recovery, but it gives no single recovery date across all measures, so the verdict is mostly true rather than true.