For everybody wondering why the economic recovery feels like a recession, here’s the answer: We’re still at least five years away from regaining everything lost during the 2007-2009 downturn.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicts that real median household income — perhaps the best proxy for middle-class living standards — won’t reach the prior peak from 2007 until 2019. Since the numbers are adjusted for inflation, that means the typical family will wait 12 years until their purchasing power is as strong as it was before the recession. That would be the longest period of stagnation, by far, since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Even though the recession officially ended in 2009, median household income declined until 2012 (which suggests maybe we ought to reconsider the way we define recessions). The total decline from the peak in 2007 to the bottom in 2012 was 8.3%. For a family earning $50,000, that means they would have been getting by on $4,150 less per year.

There's been a small uptick in incomes since 2012, but we're not even close to digging out of the crater caused by the recession. Census data going back to 1967 shows that to be the biggest drop in any recession, and the same probably holds true going all the way back to 1940. The second-worst drop in inflation-adjusted income was 6%, from a peak in 1979 to a bottom in 1983. This chart shows the trend (numbers after 2013 are projections):

By other measures, the recession is a distant memory. Total employment eclipsed pre-recession levels earlier this year. The stock market exceeded its 2007 peak in 2013, as did the total amount of household wealth — mostly home equity and financial investments. But the achingly slow recovery in incomes reveals the troublesome changes that are transforming the whole U.S. economy and holding back the middle class: Certain skills are becoming rapidly outdated, many jobs pay less than they used to and a greater share of income is flowing to the wealthy.

The stark disparity between the return of jobs and wealth, on one hand, and depressed incomes, on the other, shows the limits of the Federal Reserve’s ability to stimulate the economy. The Fed’s super-easy monetary policy has clearly helped boost stock prices and home values, which helps the wealthy most of all, since they’re the ones who tend to own stocks and homes. That's why some aggregate economic data looks pretty good — huge gains at the top pull up the averages. But the most aggressive Fed action ever has been unable to prevent an ongoing income depression. Of course, incomes might have been even lower had the Fed been less aggressive.