She works hard for the money

So the one thing that has really put a bee in my bonnet lately is the fact that it is SO difficult to get a job here in Sydney at the moment.
In the past couple of months or so, I must have applied to at least 40 different vacancies, and I made sure that my resume was all up to date and was really presentable, and if I was going to give the resume to the store in person, I would make sure that I was pretty presentable as well, just to improve my chances.
And out of all those forty plus applications, I've only heard back from about 5 or so, and I'm not really holding my breath waiting for all the others to reply back to me.
The thing is, these days you can't even get an entry level job anywhere without having worked in the career field for years already, which seems like an oxymoron to me. Surely, if you already had a year or two experience in the field of work you wanted to get in, you wouldn't really be going in for an entry level position, would you?

Now I know that generation Y tends to be regarded as lazy and lacking work ethic, but that is such a sweeping generalisation and surely cannot apply to everyone in that 18-29 bracket or so.
However, by employers not wanting to hire people of this age, how would generation Y be able to develop a good sense of (office) work ethic if all they are able to get are menial, labour-intensive jobs?
This article states that employers are often looking for staff members, but are very reluctant to hire anyone from that age group, which to me sounds a little bit like discrimination. Aren't companies supposed to conduct they're hiring processes indiscriminate of age, gender, weight, sexuality, etc? If someone has the skills to do the job, I think they should at least be given the chance to prove themselves.
One final problem I've found with this scenario is that if noone from that age group is hired into those certain professions, and generation Y-ers find an alternative career path, it just looks to me like it would leave a gap in skilled people for certain business careers, wouldn't it?

Alternatively, we could all become Fortune Cookie writers, or snake milkers. Have a look at this one. You'll find a list of really weird and funny jobs, maybe some different career paths from the ones you're working towards. Other jobs include an Ostrich Babysitter, Dice Inspectors and a Furniture Tester. And we're all spending thousands to go to university when there are perfectly good jobs like those?