Maggie's Farm

Anecdotally speaking, there's probably truth in that suggestion. When I was in College & just after, I knew kids who took positions as unpaid interns & their folks floated the cost. But I also knew people who worked an unpaid internship and paying job at the same time.

In any case, I think it's pointless fretting by Progressive folk obsessed with smoothing out every kink in the economy they perceive as contrary to "social justice".

Ban them or tax the employer like they're paid and internships become the same as part-time jobs, with the same barriers to entry, such as whether job is available at all.

Certainly most all the lawyers I know who take on interns would simply stop the practice if they had to be paid, except those in the bigger law firms, and those outfits are already playing the diversity-hire game anyhow.

In any case I am not even close to convinced that unpaid internships are a vector of real and enduring social injustice, much less than I am convinced that the average Progressive can provide a definition of "social justice" that isn't pathetically self-serving to his ideological and personal aspirations.

Probably it's more a case that the pet occupations of Progressives with BA degrees don't tend to offer a stipend.