In general, people well feels worst about half way through the 'recovery'. The term 'recession' refers to the downward part of the cycle. When this phase ends, people are at the bottom, not at the end of the recessionary cycle. Even after recovery, re-employment lags and the rate of growth in jobs is not enough to diminish the jobless rate for a while (since there typically is an increase in the job-age population and since those that were on the verge of retiring often keep working for a while because savings and investments have declined). Through the first part of the recovery, net savings/debt is a big problems for those unemployed and underemployed. Depleted savings leads to having to cash in assets at reduced value and moving to less costly housing. Things are going to feel their worst for many people.
On the other hand, when asset values recover, which tends to happen relatively early in the cycle, those with good, stable 'safe' jobs may even be in a better position because there is often a softness in prices (big discounts that are probably not fully picked up in the price indexes) to make their real income higher than before and their assets are worth enough to feel ok (I am sort of in that boat).
In this RECESSION (big enough to warrant caps), the drop in asset values was quite pronounced by 'modern' standards. If you compare the drop-off of jobs, GDP, and asset values in this recession, they outstrip the other recessions we remember. However, if you compare them with the cycles of the Great Depression (i.e., in the first half of the 20th Century, these changes are SMALLER than essentially all of them (not just smaller than the Great Depression). Of course, Keynesian economics was developed at this 'switch point'. They also learned from their repeated mistakes in monetary policy as well as started to understand which elements of fiscal policy were mistakes. The best student of the Depression is ---- Ben Bernanke. In my view, rather than complaining that this economic team has seen unemployment of 10%, they should be giving high marks for not being 12% or even 15%.