Internships At These Companies Pay More Than Average Full Time US Salary

So much for the days when being a lifeguard or working construction sounded like a pretty good summer gig. JL

Amy Wang reports in Quartz:

A study comparing the income of the median American worker ($51,350 a year from Glassdoor’s data, or $44,460 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ April 2017) to the income of interns. When yearly and monthly pay are matched up, internship pay at the following businesses is vastly more than the average American job. To be fair, interns at these companies aren’t just forwarding phone calls and fetching coffee.
Michelle Obama may champion the value of unpaid internships, but interns at these 25 companies likely aren’t complaining—as their cushy salaries are higher than that of the average full-time US worker.
Jobs website Glassdoor today released a study comparing the income of the median American worker ($51,350 a year from Glassdoor’s data, or $44,460 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ April 2017 report) to the income of interns. When yearly and monthly pay are matched up, internship pay at the following businesses is vastly more than the average American job. To be fair, interns at these companies aren’t just forwarding phone calls and fetching coffee. The intern programs at Facebook, Google, and many of the other Silicon Valley companies on the list are notoriously competitive and challenging, with many of them meant as trial runs for potential hires or promotions within the company later on.
Programs at the non-tech businesses on the list—such as Bank of America and Bloomberg—are also known for requiring interns to have specific, high-level qualifications.
Some other companies in the US like investment banks and law firms also give their interns generous compensation, but Glassdoor didn’t include any company without a sample size of at least 25 self-reported intern salaries. There are likely businesses that pay even more to their interns; an online survey conducted by former a Yelp intern last year found that Snapchat and Pinterest interns can make $9,000 a month.
Many companies in sectors like banking and technology are going head-to-head with one another for the best talent in an already-limited pool. It’s likely that internship pay, at least in these coveted fields, will get even more competitive in the future. Those in slowly-disappearing jobs with middling salaries may consider a different sort of career move.