"All my friends are unemployed".

The first rejection letter was the hardest.

It read like this: “Compliment blah blah blah we’re not hiring a graduate for this position blah blah blah.”

The second rejection letter wasn’t too different. Same nice and polite opening, leaving me hanging like a reality television contestant about to be booted off the island, and then sorry, graduate, no experience, bye-bye.

Luckily for me, the post-university graduation period of panic (and seemingly endless rejection letters) didn’t last too long. I was thankfully employed here, after I flatly refused to leave the Mamamia office following my internship.

But some most of my friends have not been so lucky.

The job market is tough right now for someone who is new to the game. Unemployment is rising, more and more full-time jobs are being taken up by multiple part-time workers and nobody seems interested in hiring a university graduate with no ‘real world’ experience.

No matter how good our grades. No matter how hard we worked. No matter how many hours we put in at the university library… Employers just want someone who has done it before. A safe pair of hands who they can be confident already knows how to do a job.

And it seems that my experience – and that of my friends – is not unique.

The Conversation recently reported that “50,000 young people have been unemployed for more than a year, with the average length of unemployment almost doubling – from 16 to 29 weeks – over the last six years”. Youth unemployment actually exceeds 12 per cent, which is more than double that of the rest of the working (or wish they were working) population.

The study released by the Brotherhood of St Laurence also states that youth unemployment isn’t a short-term issue. Apparently, if my friends don’t find a job in the near future they “are more likely to be unemployed, have poor health and have lower educational attainment” than, well, me I guess. And believe me, I am in no way more deserving than my friends.

Being unemployed at the start of your career hits you harder and can hold you back for longer than at other stages. I’ve seen it first-hand with my friends. It dents confidence, makes you retreat inside yourself, makes you question your own abilities.

Researcher Francisco Azipitarte says this is due to the “loss of employability skills and the negative effect that unemployment (especially long-term) has on employer’s assessments of job candidates”. Essentially, the research is saying that there aren’t enough jobs out there for my friends (and many, many other people) and that this will negatively impact them way down the track too. Quite possibly for the rest of their lives.

For obvious reasons, I have not been sharing these findings on my Facebook just yet.

Thankfully, there is one positive to be taken out of this and that is, this report may get people talking.

And if people are talking, more people will know about the damage that this will do to not only my friends and other youths but to the future economic prosperity of our country.

They will know about the financial and emotional impacts unemployment is having. Especially on young people and as the song goes, we’re the future – right?

And hopefully when more people talk about it… my friends will know they aren’t alone in this. That the slightly scary new working world they so desperately wish to enter is aware of what they’re going through.

And maybe, just maybe, a few more employers will take a chance on a grad.