Americans’ median incomes have recovered the ground lost since the beginning of the Great Recession — and it only took 8 years.

A report released Tuesday by Sentier Research drew on Census Department data to show what a long slog it’s been. The median annual household income was $56,746 in November. That’s barely above October’s median of $56,688, but it was enough to top the $56,688 reached in December 2007, when the recession began.

But that’s just 1.9% higher than where it was in June 2009, the beginning of the economic expansion. Perhaps even more discouraging, the median income is 1.1% lower than in January 2000, when record-keeping began.

Average weekly earnings adjusted for inflation are just 5% higher in November 2015 than they were when the recession began.

Despite all that, Sentier economists Gordon Green and John Coder are optimistic. Their own household income index hit its low point in August 2011. The period since then “has been marked by an uneven, but generally upward trend in the level of real median annual household income,” they wrote.

Inflation has a big impact on real incomes, Green and Coder noted. Since the expansion began, consumer prices have risen 10.9%. Inflation has been more wobbly in recent months as geopolitical shocks battered the cost of energy.

Sentier also noted the strong improvement in the labor market since the August 2011 trough. The jobless rate is down 4 percentage points, to 5.0%, the median duration of unemployment has been cut in half to 10.8 weeks, and a broader measure of underemployment is 9.9%, down from 16.1%.

In past economic cycles, tight labor markets have helped spur more robust wage growth. Federal Reserve policy makers have debated whether that’s less likely to happen now, in a more globalized world still recovering from the financial crisis.