Explaining unpaid internship exemptions from the FLSA

Companies in a range of industries offer internship programs to help give aspiring professionals hands-on experience in their chosen field.

Interns often work for free, receiving college credit in lieu of financial compensation. Federal regulations permit this and exempt unpaid interns from the time and attendance requirements laid out by the Fair Labor Standards Act, provided certain conditions are met.

Ultimately, the internship experience must be for the benefit of the intern and should be similar to training that would be given in an educational environment, according to a fact sheet issued by the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. The employer must not gain what the fact sheet terms "immediate advantage" from the intern's activities and should not use the intern to do the work of regular employees.

Additionally, both the employer and the intern must understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the duration of the internship, and that a job is not guaranteed after the internship is complete.

The unpaid internship guidelines were recently invoked in a case involving fashion publication Harper's Bazaar. Intern Xuedan Wang alleges she was used in place of a paid employee and is suing the magazine's parent company, seeking back pay for her employee attendance.