Employers offering unpaid or low-paid internships are blocking working-class and disadvantaged young people from the best career paths, according to new research by the Sutton Trust.
The social mobility charity found that internships, often essential for securing jobs in industries such as finance and IT, are taken up mainly by middle-class graduates with parental or personal financial support.
Nick Harrison, the Sutton Trust’s chief executive, described it as “shocking” that “many employers still pay interns below the minimum wage, or worse, nothing at all”. He applauded a government pledge to ban unpaid internships, arguing that “not all young people can get support from the ‘bank of Mum and Dad’, so banning this outdated practice will help to level the playing field”.
A survey of 1,200 recent graduates revealed that 55 per cent of middle-class respondents had undertaken internships, compared with only 36 per cent from working-class families. This gap — 19 percentage points — has widened significantly from the 12-point difference recorded in 2018. The trust noted that unpaid or underpaid roles still make up 61 per cent of internships, forcing many interns to rely on family, friends or personal savings to get by.
Across sectors, real-estate firms were most likely to offer little or no pay, followed by construction, IT, finance and legal. Retail was the most consistent at meeting minimum wage requirements, ahead of media, marketing and advertising. The Sutton Trust is urging a ban on unpaid internships of four weeks or more and stricter enforcement of minimum wage laws. It also wants companies to advertise all intern roles publicly to widen access beyond well-connected graduates.
A separate YouGov survey commissioned by the charity found that 38 per cent of employers favour an outright ban on unpaid internships, with an additional 30 per cent calling for better enforcement of wage legislation. Graduates who already had professional contacts were almost twice as likely to have completed an internship, while 71 per cent of privately educated graduates had taken on such roles, compared with only 40 per cent of their state-educated counterparts.
