Summer Interns in NYC Learned a Lot — Including How to Live on Nearly Nothing

Are unpaid internships necessary evils or barriers to entry? Last week, we asked listeners how they managed to take on low- and no-pay work.

Our call-out was prompted by a story in Refinery29 in which a marketing intern reported that she lived in the West Village thanks to a $25 an hour internship — and a lot of financial support from her family. We heard from interns who barely scraped by and others, like Kaitlin Mahar, whose tech internship came with a lot of “perks,” including free housing in NYU dorms.

“We got catered lunch twice a week, and then there were also just tons of really fun events that they organized for us to do as an intern group,” she told WNYC. “So we went to see a show on Broadway, we had some nice picnics outside, and other kinds of entertainment or happy hour events like that that were covered by the company.”

We heard from many more interns who had a harder time surviving while working at their internships. Many said they earned extra money by dog walking, selling secondhand clothing and nannying.

Hannah Stark supplemented her meager earnings from a start-up internship with retail work, even though she had free housing and meals through a job as a residential adviser in an NYU dorm.

“I was working like 70 hours a week and just barely staying afloat,” she said.  

Finding affordable housing was a major factor in being able to take on an internship.

“I slept in a sleeping bag in a friend’s living room,” Instagram user @cait.carvalho, told WNYC. She said she spent a semester interning at two film organizations in the city with a weekly budget of $10 for groceries that amounted to “a lot of peanut butter sandwiches.”

Many former interns said they were financially barred from all but the basics, so enjoying the storied cultural and culinary institutions that draw throngs of tourists to the city wasn't a consideration.

“I couldn’t afford to go out or visit museums or ride the subway too much,” @devonshyre told WNYC on Instagram. “Every weekend I walked from Brooklyn, where I lived, across the bridge and all over Manhattan until evening, because I just didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Similar memories of austerity ran through many of the responses we got on Twitter:

I interned for a summer and made nothing. I lived on one meal a day and water, and worked from 9am until....late. 3am or all night sometimes.

— Zach Beale (@Zachbeale) August 13, 2018

Barely survived honestly. I was only making $50 a week which covered my subway pass and that’s it. Thankfully i had help from my parents!!

— Kenzi Butler (@Kenzi_Butler) August 13, 2018

I had the best work experience I’ve ever had (I’m a career changer), but at one point this summer I had $13 in my bank account and was living off bulk lentils and rice from the back of my cabinet (I was an unpaid intern).

— Molly Enking (@mollydort) August 14, 2018

While working as an unpaid intern for a literary agency, Wendi Gu said she tried to spend as little as possible. That’s how she ended up sharing a studio apartment with three other young women.

“It was one room with four beds piled next to each other, one bathroom, and no kitchen. It was just a mini-fridge and a microwave,” Gu recalled with a laugh.

But the grind of a summer internship paid off for her.

“That’s the reason why I have a job today,” Gu said. “If I had not had that internship and been able to find affordable housing, I wouldn’t be at my agency today and I wouldn’t be selling children’s books.”

Another former intern, Max Vandervliet, told WNYC that his unpaid government internship helped him land a job in Philadelphia. Making it in New York City has a certain caché, he said — and that's part of what keeps interns flocking to this exorbitant city.

While lawsuits and guidelines have started to bump up wages for interns at for-profit companies, many still offer unpaid internships. Nonprofit organizations and government agencies aren’t required to pay interns.

The expectation that college students complete an array of professional work for no or little pay before landing a “real job” poses an additional financial burden for a generation that’s already stradled with significant student debt, said David Yamada, a law professor at Suffolk University.

“The unpaid internship is one of the ways we are front-loading the cost of getting a start to life,” Yarmada told WNYC. “That’s a discussion that goes beyond the courts and legislators. The corporate world and even the nonprofit sector need to think about the barriers to entry they’re upholding.”