Unpaid internships, another class divide

Anya Kamenetz, the author of the book Generation Debt, has an op ed piece in today's New York Times about unpaid internships.

This fits in with a theme of my recent blog posts, that young people are worse off today than they were in the past. In the past, students' summer jobs would pay them money. Today they work at unpaid internships, or sometimes even pay for the privilege of working for free. Ms. Kamenetz is correct that a pool of educated but inexperienced laborers willing to work for free will depress wages for the educated but inexperienced who actually seek to make money.

Given the importance of one's first job, it's a sensible career strategy to take an unpaid internship. Young people need to do whatever it takes to build up their resume so they can get on the correct career track. Ms. Kamenetz is therefore wrong to advise young people not to take unpaid internships. (Although if everyone refused to work for free then everyone would benefit: an example of a prisoner's dilemma.)

The new trend towards unpaid internships creates another class divide because rich parents can afford to pay for their children to work for free in expensive cities like New York while children of middle class parents have to work in a paid job which doesn't advance their career. Furthermore, the middle class values of the middle class, who believe in the virtues of "hard but honest work," tend to torpedo the future career prospects of their children.

Comments

[superdestroyer]

A couple of thoughts.

1. The same applies to getting into politics in Washington, DC. The rich continue to fix the rules so keep the upper middle class out of the game by using unpaid internships.

2. It seems to affect some industries more than others such as publishing, the media, and government. It goes along with the idea that the second and third generation rich all want to write screenplay, produce movies, or manage night clubs. I can't find many unpaid interns in medicine because the job market is tight and I doubt you could find many unpaid inters at the nuclear power plant or the pesticide manufacturing plant.

3. You could also blame it on decreasing family size. Smaller families allows families to extend the time frame of support.

[Joker]

The question is: What can government do to make everyone equal!?

[Jody]

Amplifying superdestroyer's second thought, I ascribe this phenomenon to too many people majoring in certain fields (like political science and journalism for which I am aware of the unpaid internship phenomenon). Clearly, there's a strong market signal telling students not to major in those fields (I can't think of a stronger market signal than having to pay to work), yet they persist nonetheless.

In comparison my summer internships (or more accurately co-ops, but six of one, half dozen of another) were paid quite well (~$21/hr), but I majored in electrical engineering.

[L]

superdestroyer,
what do you mean by "upper middle class"? When I see that phrase, I usually think "professionals," although that's also vague.

I find it hard to imagine a meaning of "upper middle class" in which they're the ones who can't afford unpaid internships for their children.

[The Superfluous Man]

I don't think it's a conspiracy of the rich trying to keep the middle class down. It is rational: if you can pay nothing with little harm to intern quality, why not?

I agree with Jody (and am also headed for engineering).

There may also be a lack of good filters for job applicants. Griggs v. Duke Power Co. effectively banned the use of IQ tests, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ - lists a correlation of r = .54, but that is the average. It varies with the intellectual demand of the job; Murray in The Bell Curve documented the correlations of various hiring procedures with productivity, and IQ was far and away the highest. Others registerd in the r=.1-.3 range I believe.)

This actually helps the rich at the expense of the lower classes, as the rich can better afford credentials that are a crude proxy for IQ & productivity, like a Yale degree and an unpaid internship. Funny to think that if America were not so ethnically diverse, IQ might be a cause celebre among the left.

It irks me that companies often look for relatively meaningless criterion when hiring, when IQ tests are unmatched in their efficiency. These alternate methods are more costly to both parties, and benefit the wealthy over the well endowed. Consider internet job listings. Companies often report having received too many online applications to process. A simple, three digit number could raise productivity, and cut hiring costs. Ultimately, it would mitigate in part unmeritocratic methods like networking. I am personally angered by all the shenanigans of hiring when faced with this knowledge.

[Carolyn]

Unpaid internships are not new. When I went to college from '82-'86 a lot of my friends got them to pad their resume. And, yes, like Jody pointed out above they were in fields like journalism and advertising. Like her, I took a paying electrical engineering co-op job at $20/hr.

[Cato]

Will Wilkinson takes Anya to task for her op-ed here: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2006/05/31/the-baffling-mind-of-anya-kamenetz/

[Half Sigma]

Whether Anya is right or wrong about anything, what's most interesting to me is the trend towards unpaid internships. I agree that it's a noteworthy trend so I commend Anya for bringing it to the nation's attention.

[Ian Welsh]

It really depends on the job for IQ. There are actually jobs where there is a negative correlation with IQ, and there are many jobs where the correlation tops out (ie. beyond X # of standard deviations being more intelligent doesn't help. Sometimes it hurts.)

Besides, half the population is below average. Everyone forgets that. They still deserve jobs.

[superdestroyer]

I know this is an old thread but you should look up the 14 August 2006 Washington Post article about interns in Washingotn, DC. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/13/AR2006081300872_pf.html

The print addition is better since its picture for the story shows four white, frosted hair good looking women sitting at a table in a bar in Dupont Circle. The story, without intending to, reinforces the idea that interns positions are not for the poor or minorities.

[spungen]

It struck me that almost all of the sources were from Universities of California (Davis law school, Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Barbara). I wonder if that's because there are so many UC interns, or just because people from California are chattier ...

They're certainly not for the poor. But, I've known several good-looking minority "leadership" types who had such jobs.