Taking as given that the NBER correctly identifies the dates of business cycle turning points, the authors evaluate the real-time performance of the Markov-switching model in replicating the NBER’s business cycle dates. They apply the model to two datasets: growth in quarterly real gross domestic product (GDP) and growth in monthly economywide employment. They first confirm the result found elsewhere that the model is able to replicate the historical NBER business cycle dates fairly closely when estimated using all available data. Second, they evaluate the real-time performance of the model at dating business cycles over the past 40 years; this is accomplished by estimating the model on recursively increasing samples of data and evaluating the evidence for a new turning point at the end of each sample.