The Dangers of Unpaid Internships
Unpaid internships are dangerous. In full transparency, I did an unpaid internship in the summer of 2018, but in my defense it was only one day a week and it was with the company I worked for at the time, just a different department. The standard for internships at this point changes based on the industry, in marketing it seems like the standard is paid internships (at least in MN) while some sports analyst positions and law interns are largely unpaid. Unpaid internships used to be the standard across the board, so it is good to see progress being made, but I want to talk specifics on why this kind of work is so dangerous, not only for interns, but for society at large.
There are obvious downfalls to unpaid internships, how is someone supposed to survive if they are not getting paid? By my assessment there are really about four ways someone could make an unpaid internship work.
They have parents that are willing to pay for them to live while doing the unpaid internship.
They are living off of or taking out student loans or personal loans to pay for themselves to live.
They saved enough money to survive not being paid for an extended period of time.
They work another job during the internship to support themselves.
While these unpaid internships are technically possible, they often don’t allow for individuals who might be less financially stable to apply. This severely limits intern applicant pools and typically allows for kids born into families that can support them to get these internships and therefore gain more experience and have better opportunities than their peers. The movie Born Rich (highly recommend) highlights exactly these sorts of injustices. Made by Jamie Johnson, the heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, this movie dives deep into the kinds of advantages these kids have and what kind of things they get away with. This is how the cycle typically works, someone gets an unpaid internship in a field, and their peer doesn’t apply for that internship because they can’t afford to not make money, then when it comes time to apply for jobs the young adult who has the internship experience is much more likely to get a higher paying job than those without that experience. There are some pretty clear classist issues when it comes to unpaid internships. Additionally, unpaid internships don’t really prepare young adults for the real world and their first real job. If you are working an unpaid internship you don’t learn how to budget based on getting paid every two weeks, you don’t learn about PTO, benefits, salary negotiations, etc. These are all important things to learn about and something you typically encounter for the first time at your first job, but wouldn’t it be nice if you knew the ins and outs of these factors before then?
The classist issue of unpaid internships is far and away the most important factor. However, if we’re looking at someone who saved their money to take on an unpaid internship or are working another job we also have to consider the sustainability factor. Either the money that was saved is going to run out or the young adult is going to get burnt out working two jobs, which leads to them not wanting to do more internships. This intern may have found the thing that lights a spark in them right away, or maybe they found something they don’t want to do (which is just as valuable), but if they don’t have the resources to keep trying new things they might never get to try something new. If they find something that sparks them right away that’s awesome, the problem is if they don’t, they run out resources and they are stuck. Now they have experience in this industry and don’t have the resources to start over. It is the same issue when students decide they don’t like the path they’re on but it would take two more years to graduate if they switched.
When you work a paid internship you gain real life skills, like budgeting, you gain work experience, and you have the freedom to decide you don’t like what field you are in and you can switch to a different one. The goal is to get rid of the perpetual cycle of people feeling stuck and too scared to find something new. Instead of telling people to get over their fear let’s break the cycle, a small step is not allowing unpaid internships.
Born Rich Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVbBVftUkCU
