Internships
Securing an internship has long been a rite of passage for college students, paid or unpaid; you take it for the connections and the network. That’s what we’ve been told. Yet Gen Z students are beginning to challenge the path their predecessors laid out.
Why is this? One large reason is the ever-increasing cost of living. Many students cannot afford to be “working” without some financial compensation. Unpaid work has faded from the vision of character building, instead seeming more exclusionary. The students who may be high achievers may not always have the financial cushion to give up salaried commitments to pursue connections. The students who can do so are largely supported by a familial income, but not everyone is so lucky. Another important aspect of this is that Gen Z watched millennials take these internships, yet they are still struggling in the job market today. It is fair to say that they have somewhat lost trust in the idea of taking whatever you can get just for the potential of a good job in the future. One could say that Gen Z has learned that exposure cannot pay rent.
Class inequality
The main issue with unpaid internships is that they favor wealthier students, which only further reinforces class inequality. These internships often involve real labor, long hours, and serious responsibilities, all without a paycheck. The vague promises that employers provide, like “networking” and “experience,” rarely translate into securing future jobs. Many internships today are replacing what should be entry-level jobs.
Students are pushing back against this, however, by turning down unpaid offers and publicly calling them out online. The shift into the digital age has also led to an increase in paid remote work and freelancing, offering students greater alternatives. Aside from that, Gen Z has more outlets to air out bad employers. These include TikTok and other social media platforms where students can share their experience working with specific companies. Above all else, students have begun prioritizing work-life balance amid the growing wave of mental health awareness.
The big question is:
Why are these companies not paying their interns for their work?
Passion shouldn’t always mean free labor. If a company can’t afford to pay its interns, it raises questions about the firm’s sustainability. Gen Z has grown to value transparency and fairness over just prestige. In many places, unpaid internships are legally restricted; however, these laws are very loosely enforced. This allows the line between a learning experience and exploitation to get blurry. Many universities benefit from internships, whereas students bear most of the risk.
The bigger picture is that Gen Z isn’t willing to do unpaid work, not out of laziness, but rather due to an increasing sense of economic realism. They aren’t anti-work, they’re anti-unpaid work. These shifts signal changing expectations about fairness in early careers. As this trend continues, we could even see large firms shifting to redesign their internships, or staying static and facing the consequences.