Are Interns Doomed?

How ingrained are unpaid or sub-minimum-wage interns in Washington, D.C.'s economy?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was the person most responsible for hiking our national minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. Before that, she was asked in an interview by gadfly libertarian documentarian Jan Helfeld, "How much do you pay your interns?"

Pelosi replied, sensibly enough, "That depends on the program that they're part of." She explained that some interns are paid a stipend that is not tallied up by hourly work, and some work for free, usually for course credit at their universities.

Helfeld pounced: "But wait a second. Didn't you say that all services were worth at least $5.15 [an hour]? And here there is a service that is being rendered to you personally that you are not compensating at all."

"No, I said to you earlier -- I said to you, unless someone decides that they want to volunteer. And you cannot underestimate the volunteer effort," she said, faux patriotically.

Helfeld asked, "So if someone wants to volunteer to work at McDonald's for $4, is that all right or is that illegal?"

The exchange, captured on YouTube with over 120,000 views thus far, went downhill from there.

It helped put forward the unflattering double image of Nancy Pelosi, Friend of the Worker, Exploiter of College Students. Pelosi lost the exchange on points, as debaters say, but that's because she was working within a system that is built on the wrists and forearms of cheap intern labor.

More than anyplace else I've ever known, Washington, D.C., is crawling with minimally compensated interns from all over the country, seeking adventure, experience, and, most often, a leg up.

Some interns are there on their parents' dime, with trust funds and the like. These people are sometimes described as the "dependently wealthy."

Others are there on their own meager resources. They use savings, sublet or sleep on friends' couches, wait tables to make ends meet to get a chance at a better future.

Who can blame the interns for trying? Not I.

Youth unemployment is sky high around the country. D.C. is flush with cash and ambition and connections. Young interns might as well see if they can secure employment with more clout and compensation than they could get elsewhere.

The biggest intern news this week was a piece in Vice magazine titled, "The Exploited Laborers of the Liberal Media." Charles Davis reported that many left-wing magazines, in D.C. and around the country, compensate their interns with appallingly low wages -- if they pay them at all.

Davis charged hypocrisy. Here you have publications -- including The New Republic, The American Prospect, and The Washington Monthly -- that regularly agitate for higher wages for workers paying their own people peanuts, at best.

Worse, Davis played the class card. He said, sure, the children of wealthy parents can afford to work in the progressive press for free for a time, but what about those would-be journos who don't stand to inherit wealth? Isn't the current system discriminating against them?

Debate about this has been handicapped by the biases of the participants.

Folks on the right may be inclined to defend cheap or free internships, even while their interns are, by and large, better compensated. Instead, conservatives have found it more expedient to have some fun with the double standard of the pay-as-I-say, not-as-I-do left. National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke ran a post on The Corner titled, "Mother Jones Advised Intern to 'Sign Up For Food Stamps.'"

Liberal commentators, especially ones who benefited from internships or who know people who benefited, will quietly make points about how such opportunities can be invaluable. But they don't want to do so too loudly, for fear of seeming hypocritical or, worse, Republican.

It's an understandable fear. America's minimum-wage laws, both nationally and at the state level, coupled with the economic downturn at the end of the Bush Era and the anemic Obama Recovery, have created mass unemployment among young would-be workers.

These things have effectively sawed off the lowest rungs on the employment ladder for millions of Americans. And as states move to bump up their own minimum wages and mostly Democrats in Congress agitate to follow suit, it's only likely to get uglier.

Internships are one way around this: a legal means, often connected to college, of getting folks on-the-job training. With internships, young workers can demonstrate skills that would justify hiring them at the minimum wage or higher. Without, they might be so out of luck.

The point to make about low or non-paid internships is not that they're perfect, but that imperfect opportunity beats none at all from the perspective of people grasping for any opportunity.

As for the class argument, applying minimum-wage laws to internships will create fewer of them. Fewer spots will mean greater competition for the existing spots. Between the children of wealth and their poorer, less connected, would-be colleagues, I know which way I'd bet.