- Hey everyone, Myles Bess here.

Journalist, former intern, and host of Above the Noise.

So the first official job that I ever had was an internship at a media company here in Oakland when I was 16.

Shoutout to YR Media, they're dope.

Now it was a great experience.

Helped me launch my journalism career and got me on YouTube talking to all you fine people.

You're welcome by the way.

Now lucky for me, that internship was paid.

If it was unpaid.

I don't think I would've taken it.

Time is money, and my time isn't free.

But now imagine an alternate timeline where that internship is unpaid.

I don't take it.

Someone else does that person starts their journalism career and winds up hosting this show instead of me.

Can you imagine?

(harp plays) - Hey everyone, Randy here.

Macaroni and cheese master, sticky note artist, former alien abductee and of course, host of Above the Noise.

(harp plays) - Is it over?

Now, unpaid internships can be a touchy subject for a lot of people.

For some it's a temporary sacrifice to get one step closer to a paying job that you really want.

For others it's just a tool companies can use to exploit people for free labor.

So, the question for today is, do we abolish unpaid internships?

(funk music plays) Alright, so the debate around paid versus unpaid internships has been around for years.

But when we asked for your thoughts on them, the responses landed pretty clearly on one side.

Y'all don't like unpaid internships.

They need to be paid.

Not paying them only allows the most privileged people the ability to take the internship.

I feel like even if an internship is paid way below the minimum wage, it's still much better than being unpaid.

It takes too much time, especially for students.

We also put up two polls on Twitter.

And when we asked, should unpaid internships exist?

Everyone said no.

But when we asked.

Would you take an unpaid internship?

Almost half said yes.

Y'all, don't like unpaid internships, but some of you would still take one.

And that kind of explains why unpaid internships are still hanging around.

You might not like them, but companies do.

And they're betting that you'll take one.

Now I'm going to get into the pros and cons of unpaid internships.

But first let's take a quick look at how they ever became a thing in the first place.

See, back in the day from the middle ages up through the 1800s.

Apprenticeships were the way to get into skilled trades.

You want to get into a fabulous career making glass.

You didn't go get your BA in glass blowology.

You went and apprenticed for a master glassblower.

The whole experience was kind of like a really long well-structured internship, before there were internships.

Today one in three Americans, 25 and older has a college degree.

And these new grads don't want to be glassblowers.

They're competing for a limited number of entry level jobs, tech, finance, media, fashion all those kinds of gigs.

So you've got more people than ever before competing for a limited number of jobs.

And that's ushered in the rise of the internship.

New grads now have to prove to companies that they're worth hiring for entry level jobs, and the bigger and fancier the company.

The more people want to intern there.

Even if it's unpaid.

In the US there are over one and a half million internships field every year.

In just about every field you can think of.

And as of 2018, around 43% of them are unpaid.

Now that seems really high to me.

I'm not even gonna lie to y'all.

You're telling me that these companies can't pay 10 students eight bucks an hour?

Come on.

Now, obviously people take unpaid internships for many of the same reasons other people take paid internships.

They want hands-on, practical experience in a field that they're interested in.

There's value in that.

And they hope that that valuable experience will help them land a job in the near future.

Here's the thing though, not all industries are the same when it comes to internships.

If you're into finance, or tech, or engineering.

Paid internships are generally the norm.

Jobs in those fields pay well and are in demand.

So those companies make it a priority to pay their interns.

But, that's not the case when it comes to other industries like entertainment, publishing, fashion, the arts or most do good non-profits.

In those fields, unpaid internships are really common, because the number of people who want them is greater than the actual number of internships available.

It's supply and demand folks.

I mean, who doesn't want to work with the producer who's making the next cool movie?

Or a designer who's going to bring JNCOs back?

That sounds dope.

So if an unpaid internship is your best shot to do that maybe you suck it up and do it.

Because it's not just what you do that's important.

It's who you meet.

It's about networking people.

It's getting in front of the important folks, the decision makers, and getting noticed.

I recently learned about the fashion designer Autumn Adeigbo.

She started her own clothing line a few years ago.

And do you know what he credits a lot of her success to?

A string of unpaid internships.

One of them was with the famous fashion designer, Betsy Johnson.

Here's her take.

Quote, there's something to be said for being able to see an icon like Betsy every day, and know that my dream was actually possible to achieve because of her presence.

You can't put a price tag on that.

But there's a really unfair reality behind unpaid internships.

They're way easier for people who have some outside source of cash.

So they tend to attract people who come from more privileged backgrounds.

People who don't come from money either work a paid gig on top of unpaid internships.

And that's super tough and stressful.

Or they just flat out make the decision that it won't work financially.

I mean, thinking back to my college days if I got offered an unpaid internship on a movie down in LA, I don't think I could have made that work.

Yeah.

I probably could've stayed with one of my aunts but she lives on the outskirts of LA.

So that's hella gas, and I still have to pay for food.

At that point it's not an unpaid internship.

I'm basically paying to work there, and that's not cool.

Still, unpaid internships pop up in some bizarre places, like the White House.

Yep.

The White House, the interns there literally work in the same building as the president, the most powerful person in the country, but they don't get paid a dime.

Does that make sense?

No, because they don't get paid.

You get it cents they don't make cents.

C E N T, I thought it was funny, but I'll see myself out maybe next time.

If you're a numbers person, you might be asking.

Hey Myles, do unpaid internships eventually lead to a paying job at some point?

Great question.

Now there isn't any official database that tracks that kind of stuff.

But a survey from 2015 found that 44% of unpaid interns got job offers with a median starting salary around $34,000.

Paid interns on the other hand, got job offers 72% of the time and made more money, around $53,000.

When I pull back and look at unpaid internships they seem to exist in this weird gray area.

One person's exploitation is another person's opportunity.

You've got people who use them as a stepping stone, to move on to bigger and better things.

Well, other people feel exploited and maybe even end up suing the company they intern for.

Yes, I'm being for real.

Back in 2011 two unpaid interns who worked on the movie, Black Swan sued the film studio for violating labor laws.

They claimed that they didn't get anything out of it.

And it just was meaningless chores.

Like coffee runs, and taking out the trash.

One of the interns said, and I quote.

The only thing I learned on this internship was to be more picky and choosing employment opportunities.

Sheesh.

Now they won their case too.

So they got paid back wages and to try and fix things.

The US department of labor put together a test for unpaid internships, basically for them to be legal, they have to benefit the intern more than the company.

If they're the other way around, they just might be illegal.

There's one big exception though.

Non-profits, they can benefit as much as they want.

A lot of them rely on volunteers to get the job done.

So the government kind of lowered the bar for them.

I work for KQED, which is a non-profit in San Francisco.

And up until 2014, the internships here were unpaid.

So they could have had interns cleaning carpets, and sharpening pencils all day.

And that would have been totally legal.

I mean, they didn't, but they could have.

But for the record, we've had some amazing interns work on this show.

They were paid and they did amazing work, like Alex here.

- Hey, what's up Myles?

How's it going?

- [Myles] He Started off as an intern and even got promoted.

And he had a great time working with us.

Right, Alex?

- Yeah.

Myles working with you was awesome.

I mean, there was a couple of things that I probably would change in the future.

- Right, Alex?

- Yeah.

I mean, everything was, was perfect Myles.

Why would you think I.

It was great, everything was perfect.

- Exactly.

That's what I thought.

But now we want to hear from y'all.

What do you think?

Should we abolish unpaid internships?

Or do they have a role to play in jump-starting careers?