If you are saying one's future job prospects would increase more if one remained unemployed, I doubt it. The only large survey I'm aware of (and I'm not an expert here by any stretch) indicates that there isn't a statistically significant difference in finding a job after college between those who have had unpaid internships and those with no work experience. This itself isn't an argument against not paying interns, but it is an argument to young people about not subjecting themselves to them. The potential caveat of that study is that they don't show the numbers by field. It could be that unpaid positions are more likely to be offered in field with high unemployment to being with, which supply and demand should dictate. In engineering, where I had my college internships, unpaid positions are unheard of. I got $14 an hour as an intern in 2004 at Dow Automotive, and my classmates told me I was getting fucked.Compared to what? If you are saying one's future job prospects would increase more if one got a paid position instead of taking an internship, I think that's reasonable.
Four months after that article appeared, the National Association of Colleges and Employers responded to "misapplication" of their survey conclusions, emphasizing that they only looked at intern-to-hire data prior to graduation, not after, and (as usual) more research and analysis were needed. In particular, they observed "that NACE does not have sufficient information about the individual students and their job searches to adequately explain" why the unpaid interns did not exhibit the same improvement in intern-to-hire statistics. The controls for gender, ethnicity, and academic major did not clear it up, and they do not know if "something distinctive about the places and kinds of jobs for which students with unpaid internships applied (e.g. not-for-profit vs. for profit organizations)" might explain the difference. There is a lot of variation in the places and kinds of jobs that offer unpaid internships, according to an informative report from Intern Bridge, another source for the Atlantic article. Some highlights: • Women are more likely to take unpaid internships (77%) "because they tend to be more involved in social justice, environmental, and social service issues." • Students with family income below $80,000 participated in unpaid internships at 46% compared to 40% for students with family income above $80,000. (While some complain that unpaid internships exploit the poor and give little benefit, others complain that only wealthy people can afford to consider them, so the experience and networking benefits of unpaid internships go to them.) • Unpaid internships are more common at non-profits (57% of internships unpaid) and government (48%), while for-profit companies have 34% internships unpaid. • Smaller firms have higher levels of unpaid internships (55% for those with fewer than 100 employees). The largest companies, with over 5000 employees, offered fewer than 20% of their internships as unpaid. • The largest proportions of unpaid internships were found in government (here stated as 54%), health (62%), non-profits (63%), and arts/entertainment/broadcasting (68%), while companies in the utilities, transportation and manufacturing sectors provide less than 17% of their internships unpaid. NACE concludes that "Unpaid internships can be legitimate, valuable extensions of classroom learning, if properly constructed." Thanks for keeping up with the conversation. I am not as clear on the value of unpaid internships as I may sound, arguing for their virtues. Maybe they are not that helpful. What I am unclear on is the confidence with which some people condemn voluntary working relationships that are not highly paid (in salary). You are one of very few people I have seen acknowledge the benefits that accrue to really desperate people who accept working conditions that most Americans would consider undignified and beneath them, and I think that is an important perspective to include in the it's-not-perfect-so-ban-it discussion.there isn't a statistically significant difference