This past summer, myriad University of Wisconsin students worked as unpaid interns at business firms, financial institutions, media corporations, bureaucracies and elected officials’ offices. Hopefully, dedicated interns will gain valuable work experience and a reliable reference that they can utilize when searching for another job. What they certainly will not gain from their internship, however, is compensation for their work.
In recent years, the number of unpaid internships—and the popularity of them among college students—has proliferated due, in part, to the Great Recession, which made unpaid internships more appealing to struggling businesses.
But some employers have turned to unpaid internships to maximize profit by relegating menial labor, which provides no educational benefit. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act—which the United States Department of Labor enforces—these unpaid internships are illegal. Still, violations persist.
Some unpaid interns work 12-hour workdays doing what essentially amounts to running errands for their employers’ office, which is hardly an enriching experience for any intern, paid or unpaid. Some of these exploited interns have sought recourse by suing their employers for unfair and ostensibly illegal employment practices.
It’s clear that unpaid internships that provide no educational benefit to participating interns shouldn’t be and technically aren’t legal, although employers are rarely cited for exploitive and thus illegal unpaid internships. It is less clear why unpaid internships that do provide an educational benefit to their interns should be abolished too.
Internships provide invaluable work experience and have become quasi-compulsory résumé-builders that play an integral role in the advancement of one’s career. Despite the fact that many unpaid internships are enriching, federal law should prohibit all unpaid internships. Income inequality in America—especially over the past few decades—has grown markedly, while economic mobility—that is, the ability of an individual to improve (or lower) their economic status—has declined.
Unpaid internships accentuate the trend of growing income inequality and diminished economic mobility. For students from well-to-do families, the benefits of unpaid internships are clear: practical on-the-job experience, exposure to working in an office environment and, not least of all, important networking connections.
For students from households with average or below-average incomes, however, accepting an unpaid internship comes with significant opportunity costs. These students have already forgone wages to attend college. In addition to missing out on potential income while at school, accepting an unpaid internship requires students to forgo wages that could be used to pay for their college education, pay off student debt, or even be used for spending money. What’s more, unpaid internships oftentimes displace entry-level paid positions at businesses, resulting in higher rates of unemployment for recent college graduates entering the workforce. Lawmakers from President Barack Obama to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have expressed concern over rising income inequality and eliminating unpaid internships would be an important step to mitigate income inequality.
Another important loophole in the Fair Standards Labor Act exempts government entities from a scrupulous six-part test for legal unpaid internships that the private sector must work in accordance to. In a day and age when Congress’ approval rating is laughably small, eliminating the government’s exemption from the law would be a step toward restoring Americans’ confidence in Washington.
The time has come to end unpaid internships. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which was enacted in 1938, is antiquated, ambiguous and arbitrarily enforced. In instances of employers exploiting their unpaid interns by making them perform menial labor with no real educational benefit, eliminating unpaid internships and enforcing the law would ensure equal pay for equal work. For those who do not come from well-to-do families, eliminating unpaid internships would ensure equal access to important career advancement opportunities, mitigating and hopefully reversing the worrying trend of growing income inequality and diminished economic mobility in America.
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