Legality of unpaid or low paid internships

drowningstudent

New Member
Jurisdiction
New York
I am in the interviewing process and finding it very difficult to obtain quality employment. Several employers have been offering me internships which I've discovered are either unpaid 'with benefits of experience' or paying a nominal amount that is called a 'stipend' but calculates to be somewhere slightly below minimum wage based on the expected potential hours. I thought that this might no longer be legal in New York state and possibly in the US. Could someone help me understand whether this is actually a law, regulation, or just an ethical aspiration that an industry may have mentioned?
 
It is never, anywhere in the US, legal to have a completely unpaid internship UNLESS it is under a bona fide program in which you receive college/university credit for the work you do. The FLSA prohibits work for free.

Stipends can be legal but I'll let Tax get into the details as they're somewhat complicated. I work for the employee benefits office of a university and we have three kinds of post-docs; some of whom are benefits-eligible, some of which are not benefits-eligible and some of which are sometimes benefits-eligible and it's all determined by how their stipends are paid.
 
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