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[TheHerminator11]

I think I have about 15 dwarves in my fortress now. It seems like there is always at least 6-8 idlers at a time. I'm new to the game so I'm not quite sure what I should be doing to keep them all busy because it seems very inefficient to have them standing around. Any suggestions?

[JAFANZ]

If you can't find anything else for them to do, turn them into Haulers & clean up all the rock your Miners have left laying around (if you disable the Item Hauling Labour on everyone else this works even better).

I can't make any other suggestions, not because there are so few uses, but at that population level, you should have lots of uses, even ignoring the "create a military" option.

[Xonir]

Try to think ahead, about rooms you may need in the future. A massive dining hall, or the Nobles' future quarters. Mining these out and disposing of the stone will keep them busy for quite some time.

If you have an abundance of stone already, have them make stone crafts to dump on the caravans.

[Darkweave]

List all the industries, what they need, and whether it's useful to you eg:

Soap making:

Animals > butcher > cook renders fat for tallow
+
Woodcutter > logs > ash from wood furnace > lye buckets at an ashery
=
soap from a soap maker

So for soap you need:
Animals
Butcher
Cook
Woodcutter
Carpenter
Woodburner
Lyemaker
Soapmaker

For some cloth/thread:

Farmer plants pig tails
Processed in to thread at a farmers workshop
Weave in to cloth at a loom

Do all of the above and you'll have a bunch of supplies for a hospital as well as the beginnings of a clothes-making industry which can make you a fortune if you use dyes (which needs even more labours - milling and dyeing). If you make a quick list of what you'll need in the near future you'll see you need tonnes of stuff; hospital supplies, armour, weapons, trap components, furniture, nobles quarters, expanded housing areas, farming supplies (nest boxes, beehives, barrels etc.). The list goes on and on.  A lot of my idlers before I've decided on the industries I want get sent off to dig out a 40x40x10 smoothed dining hall.

[Flying Dice]

Mass-assign masonry and engraving. Have them randomly smooth walls and build a castle. This has the added benefit of clearing out tons of useless stone.

[SpiralDimentia]

I never have that many idlers until my population is somewhere around 75.... I always watch the migrants enter the screen one at a time, and change their job to something I need, and everyone is always busy.. expanding the bae, clearing out stone for stockpiles, building workshops, making crafts, beds, bins, barrels, building floors, walls, floors that will act as ceilings, training to that they can defend the base...

[ThirdSpartacus]

Like the poster before the poster before me, I typically occupy them building layers of defensive walls, bridges, and fortifications on the surface level.

After that, I usually convert 2/3 of the idlers to a standing military. The other 1/3 I assign to farming. And beer.

[Arekis]

All my idlers tend to be very preoccupied with hauling remnants of sieges or dumping body parts into the incinerator.  I also have a small squad of engravers that are slowly but surely smoothing every rock surface in my fort.

[Fredd]

Build some pumps, that pump nothing. This will keep them busy, and build up stats. If their other labors are needed, turn of the pumps

[Bouchart]

Early on you should have at least a miner, carpenter, wood cutter, mason, brewer, herbalist or planter, administrator (trade skills or record keeping), and stone crafter.  After that if you haven't disabled invasions you'd want a couple of military dwarves.  Then you'd probably want a cook and some of the other support farming skills like butchery and tanning.

You shouldn't have too many idle dwarves until you hit at least 50.

[wuphonsreach]

Prior to hitting 30 dwarves, you should never have idlers.  In rough priority order, I have:

2-3 miners working non-stop
1-2 engravers working non-stop
2-4 masons (depending on how much above ground work you're doing)
1-2 woodcutters
2-3 mechanics
1-2 carpenters
2-3 farmers
1-3 stonecraft slaves
1 brewer
1 cook (who mills and processes plants too)
1 bookkeeper
1 broker (who hauls refuse otherwise)
1 manager
5 marksdwarves
5 melee dwarves
1 senior doc (diagnosis)
1-2 docs
1-2 nurses
1 butcher
1 tanner
1 cook (additional once I start up butchering)
2-5 furnace operators (if you have magma)
1 weaponsmith
1 armorsmith
5 haulers (males get tagged as "draft" for future military squads)

A lot of jobs can be handled as secondary tasks by the bookkeeper and/or broker for things where you only make 1-3 items at a time about once a season.