After graduating from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, McCune held a Capitol Hill internship and looked for his “dream job” at a U.S. intelligence agency. When it didn’t materialize, he moved in with his parents and took a job at Macy’s. Employers are looking for experience, he said, and he’s had trouble landing interviews.

Federal Reserve

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his fellow central bankers are looking for greater progress in reducing unemployment. Fed policy makers have said they’ll continue their $85 billion-a- month pace of asset purchases until the labor outlook improves “substantially.” Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and Chicago’s Charles Evans have said they want to see the economy add 200,000 jobs a month before scaling back.

Former Fed economists Vincent Reinhart, who is now chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley in New York, says that means policy makers need to see about four months of job growth averaging at least 200,000 to justify reducing the pace of asset purchases.

“They’re going to need a substantial run of data to change course,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in White Plains, New York. “To actually do it, the economy not only has to be improved, but it has to be improved in such a way that it can take the strain of the new policy. The economy has to be in a position to take it and I don’t think it is just yet.”

Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of 2.4 percent from January through March. Growth will slow to a 1.6 percent pace in the second quarter as the effects of sequestration take hold, before improving to an average 2.4 percent rate in the second half of the year, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg from May 3 to May 8.

Housing, Energy

At the same time, growth in home construction and energy has given a boost to companies such as Fluor Corp. The engineering and equipment company based Irving, Texas, expects its global staff to grow from 13,500 to 15,000 by the end of the year, said Peter Oosterveer, president of energy and chemicals.

Wage growth remains “modest”, with pay up between 3 percent and 5 percent in North America and Europe, Oosterveer said at a conference yesterday.

Other companies, from industrial giant Caterpillar Inc. to insurer Genworth Financial Inc., are adjusting payrolls to cut costs. Genworth, based in Richmond, Virginia, will eliminate 400 jobs as low interest rates squeeze investment income.