Applications closed last week for a first-of-their-kind crop of White House interns. These college students aren’t any more skilled or motivated than the many who have passed through the West Wing before them. But they will be the first to earn money for their work.
Unpaid internships first came under serious scrutiny in 2013, when the magazine publisher Conde Nast was sued for paying its interns such ridiculously low sums as $1 an hour, or $300 for an entire summer. It settled for $5.8 million and promptly closed its internship program; it reopened the program last year, with full-time, paid positions.
Since then, a lot of for-profit companies have gotten the message. According to Carlos Mark Vera, executive director of the advocacy group Pay Our Interns, the for-profit sector is where internships are most likely to be paid.
