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There was a point in the spring of 2016 when Carlos Mark Vera reached his limit. Like thousands of other students in Washington, Vera was juggling a grueling schedule of college classes, a part-time job, and an internship—all to set himself up for a career in public service after he graduated.
His resume was impressive: an internship on Capitol Hill, one in the European Parliament, a glide path to graduating with a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree, and most recently, a coveted internship at the White House. There was just one problem: All of his internships were unpaid. Unlike some of his classmates, Vera didn’t have family money, but he wouldn’t be positioned to get a job after graduation without those internships.
So the work kept piling up, internship duties on top of classes on top of a part-time on-campus job he had to take to pay for food and rent. He was also in the U.S. Army Reserves. Fifty-hour weeks turned into 70- or 80-hour weeks. “I was just going, running back and forth and basically fighting to not fall asleep, ” he said. “At one point, I just kind of crashed. I just totally burnt out.” When he reached his breaking point, Vera made the decision to drop out of school.
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It’s an open secret that Washington’s foreign-policy machine effectively runs on interns. These interns, most unpaid or underpaid, have toiled away in the shadows, knowing their careers in foreign policy—whether in government or otherwise—won’t happen without those precious lines on their resumes.
“Everyone pretty much knows that Washington wouldn’t work the way that it does without unpaid interns, ” said Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. “Most of the people that we work with today have gotten to where they are in large part because they had been able to accept internships that weren’t paid.”
Foreign Policy interviewed more than two dozen current and former interns across government agencies, think tanks, nonprofit organizations, and other industries that work on foreign policy. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity, worried that criticizing their current or former employers could undercut prospects for their first job.
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Some of the interns who spoke to Foreign Policy received pay for their work, but many did not. Many, but not all, felt their internships were important for building their resumes and gaining experience to get a full-time job. Nearly all said they felt it was unfair they received no pay or only limited stipends for their labor. Some had to give up on careers in public service or foreign policy simply because they couldn’t afford to step into the unpaid internship circuit. Many others who are still pursuing careers in foreign policy said they know classmates who gave up on the field altogether too.
Still, how would Washington function without unpaid interns? In Congress, they man the front desks and telephone lines, manage correspondence with constituents, and help conduct legislation research. At the U.S. State and Defense Departments, they assist on policy papers, write social media posts, and carry out dull (but necessary) administrative work. At humanitarian aid groups and other nonprofits, which often have small staffs, they work on everything from managing the organization’s website to granting proposals to donor communications. At think tanks, they organize events, help run programs, or, as three separate think tank interns relayed to Foreign Policy, even ghostwrite reports that senior fellows later put their names on without giving the interns due credit. In many—but not all—cases, the interns are unpaid or underpaid.
For decades, the unpaid internship system meant the government, think tanks, and other organizations could incorporate a pool of free labor into their business model without feeling responsible for doling out any pay or benefits. The practice has a cost though, even beyond the toll unpaid internships took on Vera and countless other students.
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Unpaid or underpaid internships serve as a massive barrier for low-income students, particularly those from minority communities, to enter careers in foreign policy or national security. Many federal agencies, particularly the U.S. State Department, have long struggled with dismal diversity and inclusion records, and it starts at the bottom rung of the career ladder.
Interns struggle to wheel the tower of 20, 000 pages of health care rules and regulations from the Capitol to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office in the Russell Senate Office Building on March 20, 2013.
Interns struggle to wheel a tower of 20, 000 pages of health care rules and regulations from the Capitol to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington on March 20, 2013. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
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Things are starting to change, but progress is not uniform. Some of the leading Washington think tanks that relied on unpaid internship programs for years have begun paying interns. The Center for a New American Security was one of the first to start doing so. Others have not followed suit, however. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, for example, advertises on its website that it has at least 80 to 90 interns on its staff at any given time, and most are unpaid. The International Crisis Group, International Rescue Committee, the Stimson Center, and other prominent think tanks and nonprofits also have unpaid internship programs.
Other think tanks and nonprofits pay small stipends instead, which the interns who spoke with Foreign Policy said still aren’t enough to address financial needs for low-income students. The Middle East Institute, for example, advertises that in addition to other networking and learning benefits, it pays its interns “up to $500/month” based on their hours per week—which would amount to $3.13 an hour for a full-time, 40-hour per week internship or around $6.25 an hour for a part-time internship. The minimum wage in Washington is $15.20 per hour.
A living wage calculator created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology determined that for a single adult in the Washington, D.C. area, $19.97 per hour is constituted as a living wage and $6.13 per hour is considered a poverty wage.
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Congress has allocated funding for Capitol Hill internship programs, but it varies from office to office if, or by how much, interns are paid. As of 2019, the maximum Capitol Hill offices could pay interns was $1, 800 per month per intern, but only 1 of the 5 current or recent former Capitol Hill interns that Foreign Policy interviewed was paid this rate. One former Hill intern received no pay, outside of a small reimbursement for public transit costs. Some federal agencies offered paid internship programs, but many others—including the State Department, Justice Department, Office of Personnel Management, and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation—still rely primarily or partially on unpaid interns.
As Washington’s national security apparatus goes through a reckoning on diversity and inclusion, more current and former interns are starting to speak out on the system’s most glaring problem: Getting a job in government often requires unpaid internships, many of which are in Washington, one of the most expensive cities in the country. This shuts out most of the next generation of potential national security experts at the outset. So why, everyone seems to be asking agencies and organizations in the foreign-policy field, can’t you just pay your interns?
Over the summer, Hannah Terry, a senior at Centre College in Kentucky, landed an internship opportunity at the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda. Because U.S. State Department internships—including at embassies abroad—are unpaid, embassy interns often have to fund their own travel and lives abroad during their internship. Thanks to the pandemic, Terry’s internship was remote, which saved her costly travel. But even a remote State Department internship ended up being a financial burden. She had previously interned at small nonprofits working on shoe-string budgets that still cobbled together money to compensate their interns. The State Department, which has an annual budget of almost $60 billion per year, doesn’t.
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“Without my school funding, I wouldn’t have been able to accept it, ” Terry said. “It was definitely frustrating seeing that I was able to intern for nonprofits who were able to pay me, and the U.S. government wouldn’t. I want to be a public servant. I want to serve in these government spaces, but if they won’t pay me, I can’t do it.”
State Department officials have voiced similar frustration with their agency, and several U.S. diplomats who oversaw interns said they felt powerless that they couldn’t provide compensation or financial support. Their frustrations about the State Department are emblematic of the broader problem with workforce issues in the foreign-policy world.
The State Department has tried, and failed, to increase the United States’ diplomatic corps’ diversity in recent decades, mostly with underwhelming results. Its internship program and the coveted security clearance that comes with it is a case in point, barring many lower-income students from a foot in the door.
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Many interns at the State Department come from wealthier families who can bankroll their children’s unpaid internships. “I don’t know anyone who’s worked for the State Department as interns without being supported by their parents, ” said one midlevel State
