“When President Obama took office we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. The job loss associated with the Great Recession was enormous, but a record long recovery has put people back to work including the long-term unemployed and those who left the labor force,” said Betsey Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan and former member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, in an email. “Unemployment is low, wages are rising, and prime-age labor-force participation is recovering.”

Wages were an especially important indicator in 2016, since the improving labor market should, theoretically, increase pay for American workers. There’s been some improvement on that front: In December, average hourly earnings reached a high of $26.00, compared with $24.76 in January of this year. For the year, wage growth amounted to 2.9 percent—the strongest since the recession.

Harry Holzer, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor and author of Where Are All The Good Jobs Going?, echoed Stevenson’s sentiments. “The job market has almost totally recovered from its devastating decline during the Great Recession … significant wage growth, which was lacking early in the recovery, has returned,” he said in an email.

Job creation has been particularly good in the private sector. “During the past 8 years, the labor market has steadily created jobs—adding 11 million jobs. Today, the labor market is tightening , and we are approaching near full-employment,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, the lead economist and head of ADP Research Institute (which puts together the private-sector jobs report). Yildirmaz says that according to ADP’s data, small and mid-sized companies in the U.S. created the most jobs since 2008.

Still, several sectors—such as energy and manufacturing—continue to struggle. Stevenson says that the trouble in these sectors will require innovative ways of approaching the changing job market. “The challenge for the future will be solving the mismatch between the types of jobs people used to have and the types of jobs the economy is currently creating,” she said.

When he takes office later this month, President-elect Donald Trump will be inheriting a strong economy. During the campaign, Trump often painted a dire portrait of the American economy despite statistics showing a strong labor market, an increase in American household incomes, and rising consumer confidence.

Critics of Obama’s job market performance often point to the drop in labor-force participation and the rise in underemployment as weak spots in the U.S. labor market, as proof that there’s still room for improvement. While labor-force participation has seen some declines in the past few years, it was steady throughout the year. In December, it hovered at 62.7 percent, which is near a 38-year low. The root cause of declining participation remains disputed, with demographics and discouraged workers cited as some of the possible explanations. In 2017, the labor-force participation number will likely remain a major focus.