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Rob McGahen, 29, has felt the trend personally. After receiving his master's in business administration in 2007, McGahen worked for Boeing in St. Louis, buying parts for military planes. Last year, after moving with his wife to Pensacola, Fla., McGahen sought work for about nine months. He settled for a part-time job in the produce section of Publix, a supermarket chain. "It's certainly not a long-term plan," McGahen said. "But it keeps me busy. It keeps my skills from atrophying." Stock markets have gyrated in the past two weeks on speculation that the Fed would soon start to taper its $85 billion-a-month in bond buying
-- a step that could raise rates and cause stock prices to fall. "I think the Fed will stay on hold," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. "They want to see numbers above 200,000 on payroll jobs on a consistent basis before they start to taper off." Behravesh said he thinks the Fed will maintain its pace of bond buying through this year before scaling it back in 2014. "Today's report is perhaps the perfect number for nervous investors," said James Marple, Senior Economist at TD Economics. "It is strong enough to point to continued economic recovery but not so strong as to bring forward expectations of Fed tapering." Other analysts who have predicted that the Fed would start trimming its bond purchases later this year said they didn't think Friday's jobs report would change that timetable. John Canally, an economist at LPL Financial, blames the Federal Reserve for not specifying how much monthly job growth it wants to see before it scales back its bond buying. "They have not been transparent enough," Canally said. "That is what has unhinged markets." The Fed has been buying bonds to keep loan rates near record lows to encourage consumers and companies to buy and spend. Low rates make investments that pay interest unattractive. As result, many investors have bought stocks instead. Money pouring into stocks drove the Dow to a record high last month. Stocks have since slipped from their peaks but are still up more than 20 percent since November. On Friday, the government also revised the job figures for April and March. The revisions were slight compared with recent months, when the government had significantly revised up its initial job estimates. April's gain was lowered to 149,000 from 165,000. March's was increased slightly to 142,000 from 138,000. The net loss was 12,000 jobs. From June through August, employers added an average of 135,000 jobs a month. From September through November, they averaged 182,000. The average was 233,000 from December through February. In the past three months, job gains have averaged 155,000. The economy grew at a solid annual rate of 2.4 percent in the first three months of the year. Consumer spending rose at the fastest pace in more than two years. But economists worry that the steep government spending cuts and higher Social Security taxes that started Jan. 1 might be slowing growth in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of 2 percent or less. The Social Security tax increase is costing a typical household that earns $50,000 about $1,000 this year, or about $20 a week. For a household with two high-earners, it's costing up to $4,500.
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