There's hope... and a way.
I found myself in the same position in June 06 when I graduated with a degree in Computer Science. Sent tens of applications off to large, graduate-friendly companies with no response ... seemed that summer that they were looking for firsts and I have a 2:1.

Any road up, I signed up with as many temp industrial employment agencies as I could find (6 if I remember correctly), gave them a CV which basically said that I'd been living off the dole and cash-in-hand work during the degree years (and made no mention of having a degree) and was looking to get back into employment asap. I got my first job by the end of the week. Simultaneously I set up as a self-employed 'IT consultant' - ridiculously embellished my CV and started mass-mailing every small company I could find (in local rag) for business fixing their IT kit. I made about £3,000 over six months, not a great deal but combined with night-shift manual labour, enough to pay the rent and bills. Finally a large company got back to me and I'm now f/t employed as an IT spannermonkey.

Basically what I'm saying is there's always a way. During a memorable point in my life I owned an old, beaten-up DAF van and spent my days cruising West London side streets, knocking on doors and offering to take people's rubbish away for £10. There's always a way to find cash if you look hard enough...
(hangableautobulb is an anagram of the best album ever, on, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 17:20, Reply)