Towards a tip-jar economy

The New York Times, which itself offers unpaid internships, calls out unpaid internships, and questions whether the fashion industry can claim liberal credentials when it so relies on that form of labor. This itself is maybe worth pausing on, but let's press further:

Ginia Bellafante reminds us what we already knew (children of privilege can afford to work for free; the fashion industry's a main offender), but adds something new (a mention, buried within the story, of a specific paid job that has since been turned into an unpaid position, thereby casting doubt on whether there's some fundamental difference between work that merits pay and an educational experience). Also: that you can be an unpaid intern in retail. So add that to unpaid internships at Thai restaurants, for aspiring personal assistants, for academic researchers, for oh, just about everything. If we haven't already reached the stage of unpaid baristas, an economy in which everyone under 30 is paid exclusively via tip jar, via the whim or goodwill of their better-off elders, give it a few weeks.

This is new, but not that new - remember the "Seinfeld" episode where perennially unemployed Kramer gets an intern from a certain university where I happen to be in grad school. The kid is just his unpaid errand boy, until the university puts a stop to it? (Bringing us the line: "As far as I can tell, your entire enterprise is little more than a solitary man with a messy apartment which may or may not contain a chicken.") 1997.

But it does seem to be getting worse. Consider that of 6,599 jobs listed for students at that same university (on-campus, but mostly off-, a mix of jobs and internships), if you narrow this down to "paid," a mere 2,096 pop up. It's possible that some job-jobs aren't thinking to specify that they, you know, pay, when they post their listings, but tentatively going by these numbers, it appears that a third of listed employment possibilities for students at this enormous university are ones for which you get any compensation whatsoever. (Remember that a paid internship is going to mean a stipend, which may be below minimum wage. And those would fall under the 2,096 paid opportunities.)

And we don't quite seem to be at the point where we understand that the existence of unpaid internships itself reduces the number of jobs available, that this isn't (always) simply a matter of employers not having enough money to hire entry-level staff. And that's how the justification goes - it's half that interns are learning, half that In These Economic Times, if you want to fill your days with resume-building, non-vegetating activity, you have to take what you can get. When in fact, what goes on is, not just little artsy and/or non-profit outfits, but also big corporations, purveyors of the most in-your-face luxury, realize that the market allows them to pull an unfortunately-we-cannot-afford-to-pay-but-this-is-a-valuable-learning-experience, and to tag that weak justification onto a posting for a job that was at one time (perhaps until this very job opening!) a paid position.

So yes, it is about whether the employer or employee gets more out of the arrangement, but the employee is getting more because of desperation, because the market is such that many need the job, even unpaid, more than the employer needs the envelopes stuffed, and not (necessarily) because of anything learning-experience-specific.