This is a much more complex issue that 'young people are lazy'.
For people who have no qualifications the NMW jobs on zero hours contracts are genuinely unattractive for economic reasons. If you are on Benefits your income is stable but low. If you come off Benefits to take a low paying, part time, zero hours jobs your income is unstable and risky. Getting back on Benefits is very hard work. It is a slow and bureaucratic process and you have no money until you are back on them. That is when most people end up in debt who are on Benefits. Most people on Benefits who are only able to get NMW zero hours jobs (e.g. shop work) therefore rationally choose Benefits.
Employers do not compensate a worker for the risk inherent in a zero hours contract by paying a higher wage. They take all the flexibility, dump all the risk on the worker that they might not get many hours that week and then they pay NMW as well.
At the other end of the scale, well qualified young people are expected increasingly to work after university in unpaid 'internships'. It really is an absolute disgrace that 'internships' have come to dominate the employment landscape for young well qualified workers. It was unheard of 30 years ago when I was at university. You got a job and you got paid a god wage commensurate with the quality of your degree. No wonder young well qualified workers feel disheartened. They have been tricked and ripped off.
Employers can afford to pay workers a sensible wage and they can plainly afford to pay Chief Executives millions of pounds. Funny how the senior management of large firms still have their own protected pension pots, health insurance, company cars and all the perks plus massive salaries and sky high bonuses. Where do you think that money comes from - making low level workers work for nothing or on NMW is a big part of it and they ALL do it.
I say this as staunch Tory who believes in the capitalist system.
Something is not working properly in the employment market and firms are openly flouting NMW with internships, imposing all sorts of deductions on wages and systematically get rid of workers over age 21 who qualify for the higher level NMW.
For example, some restaurants pay an 18 year old on day release from a college catering course the reduced NMW and then keep all the tips from customers, force them to buy their own uniform/equipment and charge them for any breakages to crockery. The tricks to get away with not paying workers are rife. If you live in London and work in a high end restaurant you are literally in slave conditions. You eat in the kitchen, you work in the kitchen, you share a room and a bed with a worker who does the day shift. Some immigrants are living in garden sheds or tent cities as we know.
MoreBeta (apologies for c&p'ing the whole post but it was difficult to discard any of it and it's worth repeating for anyone who didn't catch it the first time) I completely and totally agree with EVERY. SINGLE. WORD you wrote there. It's an utter mystery to me how we came to this. It's particularly tragic about the internship thing - some companies even 'offer' 
(can you 'offer' to exploit someone?) unpaid 'internships' for what are basically pretty low grade, low-skill jobs anyway so they are hardly offering a gold-plated opportunity for experience in highly regarded or sought after niche industry, which is what they are supposed to be for.
This always makes me snort with derision as it's nothing more than the most blatant and cynical exploitation of keen young people who are prepared to do anything to prove they are not lazy or unemployable.
I think the whole thing started to fall apart when the Labour government introduced the 'up to 16 hrs a week' thing, accompanied by WTC. People who were otherwise on the dole were persuaded to work up to 16 hours a week in low-paid, going nowhere jobs and then topped up in benefits to the value of doing that job full-time. Great idea. People who are perfectly capable of full time work get to feel hard done by if they have to work more than a 2 day week and no have no financial motivation to do so at all, large corporations get to save a fortune by having a permanent revolving door of part time staff on low pay, and zero or few work related benefits, and the benefits system foots the bill for the shortfall all round - with the added costs of administering an expensive and complicated system.
And let's not forget that this system has led to a situation where adults with families now take up many of the jobs (for up to 16 hours a week) that our young people, school leavers and trainees used to do. There is no concept of the 'office junior' any more. Between jobs than can be done efficiently and cheaply by Eastern Europeans and jobs that can be divvied up and spread between part time workers doing less than 16 hours a week being subsidised by benefits, where on earth is the keen by inexperienced school or college leaver supposed to go, unless they are prepared to work for nothing at all?
It breaks my heart that we have failed the current and the next generation of young people.