The problem in my area isn't so much unemployment, it's more underemployment.
I graduated from college back in '10 with a degree in Education and a degree in History. I wanted to be a middle school history teacher. I was overly optimistic about the employment opportunities post-graduation though. None of the schools around here are hiring. I tried to use my degrees to find a job at a museum, and had no luck there either.
I spent the first six months after graduation unemployed, before finally re-applying for my old high school job at Best Buy out of sheer frustration and desperation. So there I was, a guy in his early 20's with two degrees working part-time for minimum wage as a Media sales representative in a friggin' Best Buy store. At first it was humiliating, until I talked with some of my co-workers. Our entire computer department was staffed by 30-somethings and 40-somethings that had previously been working for companies like HP before being laid off, two of our sales associates in Digital Imaging had formerly been career employees at Canon, and we had a former Sony supervisor selling TVs. The number of underemployed individuals who were working at Best Buy as a last resort pretty much matched the number of high school kids that were there.
I no longer work there, but I'm still underemployed. I spent a year looking for jobs that would make use of my education and found nothing worthwhile in my state. I now work full-time in the office of a physical therapy clinic, primarily handling insurance issues and account billing. Definitely not what I went to school for. It's a good company that employs a lot of great people, and I've been treated very well by them these past three years, so I can't complain. It pays the bills, and it's a hell of a lot better than working retail.
EDITED:
My primary issue seems to be the same as a lot of others in this topic: experience. I'm constantly being told that I lack experience. Problem is that I can't get experience if I'm never given the opportunity.
There was one time where I applied to a job at Brinks (the armored truck company), and I was rejected because the position required 7 years of consecutive employment with another company to even be considered. I have a friend who used to work for Brinks, and he laughed his ass off because, according to him, it's a job that could have been done by a toddler.
Another time I applied for a job in the Registrar's Office at Southern New Hampshire University. I aced all the interviews, shook hands with the managers, discussed salary, was given a start date, and issued my two-weeks notice to my current employer. I was going to be gaining around 10 hours of work per week, my salary was going to jump by around $50k per year, I was going to be getting a full benefits package including insurance, paid vacation/sick time, and even free Master-level courses at the university. It looked freaking' awesome. The Friday afternoon before my start date I was given a call to tell me that they'd found someone else with more experience, and I was no longer needed. The English language lacks profanity strong enough for how monumentally pissed off I was. I'm just happy my current employer is awesome, and was more than happy to keep me.
