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I believe the phase of the business cycle the United States is currently in, it is the recovery phase.

The GDP is one of the leading indicators as to why I believe we are in the recovering phase. When we look back at the quarterly GDP growth rates of 2020, the United States had 2 consecutive negative quarters meaning that we were in a recession although it was never official. The definition of a recession is that two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth mean recession; therefore supporting my unofficial belief that the U.S was in a recession.. The first quarter of 2020 was a decline of -4.8% coming from a 2019 fourth quarter growth of 2.1%. The second quarter of 2020 was a decline of -29.9%. After a recession comes the recovery phase. We can tell we are still in the recovery phase by observing the unemployment rate numbers, from January 2022 to December 2022. The unemployment rate decreased .5% going from 4% to 3.5%. This demonstrates people are able to find more jobs which in turn creates high production levels making the economy stronger.

I believe that the Fed implementing its program of raising interest rates will affect the business cycle to a faster downturn. This is because when interest is high people tend to spend less money on goods and services. We have witnessed this before in the past few years, where the Fed raises interest rates, everything becomes more expensive and so less money goes into the economy bringing us "back" into a recession.