"Most of my friends have really struggled to find work. It's not easy. They do get frustrated because most employers want someone with a bit of experience but how can you get experience if no one will give you a job?" It's an oft-heard lament from Australia's young unemployed. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that youth joblessness has reached its highest peak since 1998, with 14.2 per cent of 15-24-year-olds looking for work and one in five 15 to 19-year-olds unemployed. While young people are staying at school for longer and undertaking further education in droves, they are struggling to secure that elusive "foot in the door" job that James described. And that's partly because our love of convenience and efficiency has killed off many of those entry-level jobs, according to Professor Rob Tanton at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling. "Only a few years ago you had human beings working all the cash registers at Woolies and Coles. Now, you just have to look at the number of people using self checkouts to see what's happened to those jobs," he said.

"Online shopping has simply wiped out a lot of sales assistant work. They're just not needed in the numbers they once were. When I joined the public service 20 or 30 years ago, there were filing clerks and typists. Those entry-level jobs no longer exist due to technological change. You need a qualification even to get a foot in the door." Even those with qualifications are finding it tough, with many young graduates playing a long waiting game for that first opportunity. "There are plenty of young people with a degree in their chosen profession who can't find a job in that area," Tanton said. "That's putting further pressure on the availability of the low-skilled jobs because those degree-qualified people continue to work in the jeans shop while looking for a job in their chosen field." If a young person does get that foot in the door, chances are they'll be out that same door in a tough economic environment.

"Young people are the first to lose their jobs and the last to get them back in a downturn," said Eamon Waterford, director of policy and advocacy lobby group Youth Action. "They are the easiest ones to lay off because they have less experience and they're just not as valuable to employers." Young people do have the advantage of being cheaper to hire, as a rule, but even that's not necessarily going to help them in the modern economy, according to Phil Lewis, professor of economics and director of the Centre for Labour Market Research at the University of Canberra. "Employers increasingly want people with skills and experience and that's a challenge for young people," he said. "A young person who leaves school in year 10 would be very lucky to find a job these days."

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Kate Carnell describes the growth of youth unemployment, which is more than twice the rate for the general population, as one of her organisation's biggest concerns. "We think there's a very real chance that unless the youth unemployment issue is addressed - and it will need to be addressed quite aggressively - that we will end up with a generation of young people on the fringes of the economy," she said. She believes that employers do have goodwill towards younger workers but are wary of taking on the untested hire in straitened times. "The dilemma for small to medium businesses is that unfair dismissal laws make it really scary for them to take on new people," she said. "They are cautious about hiring someone who is untried. Business confidence is still very low. They are not willing to put on extra staff so those young people just aren't getting jobs or experience so fundamentally everyone is a loser."

The demise of large-scale programs which help young people make the leap from education into the paid workforce has compounded the problem, according to executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Tony Nicholson. "Youth unemployment is extensive right across Australia," he said. "We can't put that down to this group of young people not trying to find work or being too privileged to look. That's just not true." The numbers of jobless are not evenly spread throughout Australia with some states, such as Tasmania, showing rates well above the national average. Analysis by the Brotherhood of St Laurence shows sharp contrasts in Sydney where the rate of unemployment in the west and south-west is about twice that of the east, inner west and northern beaches. These pockets of unemployment concern Lewis as they indicate intergenerational unemployment.

"In middle-class areas most people recognise the value of study but that culture doesn't exist as much in lower socioeconomic areas," he said. "None of your friends are going to TAFE or uni, your parents didn't go to TAFE or uni, you can't see the point of doing it." While Australia's youth unemployment rate is nowhere near the heights of some European countries such as Greece and Spain where it is more than 50 per cent, the harsh impact of struggling to find work at a critical point in life is the same. "Young people lose hope, their health deteriorates, they suffer from depression and anxiety, they become vulnerable to drugs and crime," Nicholson said. Nicholson is calling for the establishment of federally funded national program to aid young people from education to the workplace while supporting employers who want to give them a start.

"We need a national youth transition program," he said. "This is the first time in 25 years the Commonwealth government has not had a national youth transition program so there is a large group of young people who no longer have that pathway into work." The Brotherhood of St Laurence ran a pilot program pairing young jobless people with local employers and found 70 per cent of participants went on to secure work. School-leavers James and Zaia found their jobs through a program run by Marist Youth Care and the Hume Community Housing Association. William Rak, national manager of Marist Youth Care's social enterprise, Affordable Housing for Life, said the employment program dubbed Assets4Life was in its infancy but he hoped to roll it out to areas of high youth unemployment around Australia. "It's not as simple as telling young people go out and get a job," he said.

"A lot of them want to work but they come from communities where unemployment is high and they don't have those networks which might open doors for them. This program gives them a chance to see what work is all about." A number of young people who had developed skills through the program have already gone on to find long-term employment. "We want them to get a qualification with a long-term future, not just a job or a course with limited prospects," he said. "We don't want to just feed people for the day, we want them to learn how to fish." Training for jobs with poor prospects

It's a question children are asked from a young age: "What do you want to do when you grow up?" By the time they have reached adulthood, many still don't know the answer. While their parents may tell them to follow their dreams, that may not land them a job. Eamon Waterford, director of policy and advocacy lobby group Youth Action, has watched many of his peers spend three years at university studying for a degree in their dream job only to land with a thud. "A huge number of young people go to university to get degrees for jobs they are never going to find," he said. "That's even happening in vocational degrees, the classic ones being teaching and journalism."

While he would never warn a young person off a course they wanted to do, he believes they should be better informed about the likelihood of success in their preferred profession. Quality of schools' career advice questioned The growing rate of youth unemployment and huge number of young people dropping out of apprenticeships has cast questions over the quality of careers advice delivered at schools. The Brotherhood of St Laurence's executive director Tony Nicholson believes many schools could do better. "First and foremost they need good careers advice," he said. "It needs to start much earlier than it does now. There is no point waiting until the last few years of high school. Young people need information on where the jobs are and I'm not sure they are getting that."

Eamon Waterford agrees, saying many high schools are locked into preconceived notions about what their students want to achieve. "Young people, depending on their socioeconomic background and the type of school they attend, are typically classed as going into a particular field," he said. "If you go to a posh private school, the expectation is that you go to uni. If you go to a public school in a low socioeconomic area, you are more likely to be offered the option of a trade or apprenticeship. I don't think young people are being given the full range of options."