Free-for-All: The Intern Economy

It's touted as a trade-off: the business gets free labor and the intern gets experience.

Except that, businesses are frequently doing a favor for the child of a favored customer - or of a good friend - and the experience of answering phones or filing is not exactly skill-enhancing. Does this increasingly widespread practice really offer entree to those who might never get the opportunity - or does it simply reinforce a system based on connections that further disadvantages those without them?

The larger problem is why, given the size of corporate profits, companies indulge this ancient process. As one who has managed interns, to do it properly requires time, effort and some expense. Hiring at a lower pay scale might produce better candidates and better output. But then maybe that is not really the point. JL

The Economist comments:

Many employers dont even know that how they use interns is breaking the law,” complains Ross Perlin. His book, “Intern Nation”, has tapped into a growing global concern about young people who work for next to nothing. As youth unemployment has soared around the world, so has interning, which is now standard practice from London to Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Shanghai.

A growing number of “serial interns” take up a succession of internships in different companies and institutions. Interning has become like a lottery in which armies of young people compete for a few precious jobs
But the odds are weighted. Getting an internship in the first place often depends on deep pockets and parental connections to which only the more fortunate youngsters have access.

What Mr Perlin wants is an intern bill of rights. But forcing employers to provide pay and benefits and comply with lots of red tape is surely the quickest way to put them off, thereby depriving young people of an early experience of the future of work. After all, what are those serial interns doing but learning about serial mastery? And although some of them may be doing menial tasks, the companies they are working for are probably so busy that the interns will also be given some tasks that actually matter.

Many people are outrageously exploited at work, but interns are not among them. After all, they are getting a free education, something that few universities provide these days