Two Cheers for Unpaid Internships

By Matthew Yglesias. America needs more on-the-job learning, not less. With unemployment sky-high, working-class wages in long-term stagnation, and climate change spiraling out of control, America’s social reformers have hit upon a strange cause: the plight of the aspiring young professional doing an unpaid internship. A June court ruling that an unpaid intern on the film Black Swan was owed back pay has given the movement substantial momentum, and Labor Day saw the launch of the Fair Pay Campaign, a move to ban unpaid internships in the United States. And indeed, many current internships would seem to violate the rules laid out in the Fair Labor Standards Act, including that the experience be “similar to training which would be given in an educational environment” and that the “employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern.” More...