VGRC

Reading the newspaper tonight, I couldn't help but notice a developing trend in the media: The ever-increasing popularity of internships. In a poor job market, some people have taken to working unpaid (or low-income) internships to gain job experience while looking for a more permanent job. I did this myself at the start of the year, interning for a month with a web development company before it turned into a paid gig. Not only did I expand my repertoire of skills, but it also got me out of the house and active during a period where I had been laid off a couple months prior and had been gong through a bout of severe depression.

While we all know this is a tough job market, according to the Boston Globe, for every available job opening there are six unemployed people, with the unemployment rate in my resident Massachusetts up to 8.8%. (Nationwide figures are even higher, at 9.4%, the highest it has been since 1983.) This is versus a 7.6% nationwide unemployment rate at the start of the year when I was doing my internship.

However, it has seemed to me lately that the popularity of internships has literally skyrocketed as well, especially in terms of media coverage. The aforementioned Boston Globe article does mention more people taking up internships; not just college students, but also people in established careers who are just pissing time while waiting for a new paycheck.

Which got me to thinking, what is the incentive for employers to hire new employees if there is a steady stream of interns to pick from? Now not only do we have a glut of people looking for jobs, but an increasing population of people that are pretty much willing to work for free. This is the wet dream of any cost-conscious employer, especially now that fully-trained and proficient career professionals are swimming in the pool of interns, and not just inexperienced college kids.

Now, I'm going to come right out now and say that I normally try to avoid the correlation equals causation argument. Just because there are two variables that seem to correlate does not mean that they are related. Furthermore, it should be noted that unemployment has a variety of major (and likely larger) contributing factors. Still, it's some interesting food for thought.