Spicejetter, you're right. Of course, when the airlines are furiously cutting costs, freezing recruitment and making layoffs, CTC can quite happily pitch up at the door and say "you WILL take these cadets and give them jobs."
CTC expanded the course numbers from 8 to 12 per month back in mid-2006 on what was presumably the notion that hiring was expected to increase. You could argue that was daft, but you can't exactly blame the cadets for that decision. The problems with the economy weren't yet on the horizon. Then of course everything went pear-shaped, hiring stopped, and as a result there has been a pile-up in the hold pool of people from all these courses who would have had jobs to go to but suddenly discovered that they didn't. It wasn't just easyJet - BA stopped recruiting (they've taken a fair number of CTC cadets of the years); Monarch's last intake was 2008 and those guys got laid off at the end; everything generally slowed down, at the precise time the larger course numbers started to spill out of the MCC and into the pool. NOT the cadets' fault.
It takes between generally 15 and 18 months to complete the course up to the end of the AQC/MCC stage. So yes, there are people who have been sitting around in the pool for 2 years plus.