Exploitation and a Lack of Diversity: The Internship Economy

Internships are a great way for young people to get a foot in the door and experience life in an industry they’re interested in. Working hard will be expected, and that’s fine, but what kind of experience are interns really getting?

Unpaid internships have become a fixture in the communications sector globally. Design, advertising, PR and media agencies and companies in the biggest – and most expensive to live in – cities in the world are exploiting young people trying to get into the industry. Many have a continuous internship programme, where new interns are hired to replace existing interns, none with a hope of ever being employed there. Some pay expenses only to cover travel – but not living costs. How, then, are the interns supposed to live? 

New research we commissioned in March spoke to almost 140 people who are in or have completed internships. Half of all interns felt they had no choice but to do an internship. A majority of respondents said their internships were unpaid (or just had expenses covered) and a third felt ‘unfairly treated’. 44% had to take a part-time job while working as an intern full-time, 8% took out a loan and 54% also depended on financial support from family. 

Over a third of interns did the same job as a paid employee, including meeting clients and delivering billed client work; or their work was confined to lesser or menial tasks and administrative duties – some not even relevant to the job itself like collecting dry cleaning and providing childcare.

Why is ‘working for free’ now viewed as a mandatory step on the career ladder? As well as exploiting people, this practice will ultimately be damaging for the industry itself. In an industry that has prided itself on – and thrived on – diversity, forcing young people to work unpaid will deny many from less privileged backgrounds the opportunity to get in the door. Projecting forward a decade or so, continuing to force people to work without proper pay will result in a homogeneous, middle-class, urban workforce. At a time when the industry is trying to promote gender equality and diversity, unpaid internships are a form of socio-demographic discrimination.

Chemistry’s approach to internships is simple. We pay post-education interns and try to provide as much of a learning experience as possible. We also have a policy of not taking on interns where we believe there is no potential position available for them at the end of the internship. 

We are calling on all workplaces to re-examine their internship policies. We absolutely need to see a cultural shift here: it can’t become par for the course that our best and brightest are expected to work long hours for no pay. This kind of slave labour is not what we should build our businesses on. We’re calling on others to follow our lead, so collectively we ensure we are providing a quality, valuable experience for interns: with at the minimum, the chance of a job at the end.