In early 2009, the U.S. was losing about 800,000 jobs a month. Congress and Obama passed stimulus measures and tax cuts to encourage companies to hire again. The Federal Reserve also took extraordinary measures to fix the economy.

Hiring did pick up...slowly. It took until May 2014 for the U.S. to finally gain back all the 8.7 million jobs lost during the downturn.

But employment has surged lately. The past two years have been the strongest years for job growth in America since 1999.