Ivanka Trump's unpaid interns share cringeworthy financial advice
Ivanka Trump's interns have some questionable advice for students worried they can't afford an unpaid internship.
In a recent blog post on IvankaTrump.com, the site's copy intern, Quincy Bulin, lays out a strategy based on feedback from fellow interns: save money in advance, get a part-time job, ask for some type of reimbursement, avoid pricey outings and set a budget.
The tips, while sensible for someone actually earning a decent income, leave out one major detail: how to pay for housing in a city where rental prices are among the highest in the nation.
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The underlying assumption, it seems, is that a parent underwrites the basic but significant costs of an unpaid internship. That premise became the focal point of online criticism, and to some, crystallized Ivanka Trump's privilege as the daughter of a billionaire.
The post also appears to confirm that Trump does not pay her interns. A spokesperson for IvankaTrump.com, a lifestyle site which bills itself as the "ultimate destination for women who work," declined to comment on the post or whether the company compensates its interns.
"We strive to create a fulfilling learning opportunity tailored to the unique interests and career goals of each intern," Abigail Klem, chief brand officer at Ivanka Trump, told Mashable in a statement. "It is our goal that at the end of the program, our interns leave with experiences that will help guide them into choosing a fulfilling career path.”
While it's not clear whether the company is violating Department of Labor criteria for when to pay interns, the post raises new questions about whether Trump's public comments on gender equality and equal pay match her company's practices.
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Research shows that women are far more likely to work in unpaid internships, possibly because they pursue careers in fields like the nonprofit sector and the arts. Kevin Miller, a senior researcher for the American Association of University Women, said that "occupation segregation" connects back to a trend in the workforce that deems some jobs — engineering versus social services, for example — as more deserving of competitive compensation.
Equal pay advocates have argued that the concentration of women in lower-paying fields helps explain the pay gap, but also points to entrenched and biased views of how we value women's work.
Anger over the blog post also focused on the fact that an unpaid internship in New York would be financially impossible for most low-income students whose parents could not bankroll significant expenses.
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"While an unpaid internship might be a good career in the long run," says Miller. "It’s a path that’s implicitly closed to certain people."
Indeed, the average price of the cheapest studio apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn are $1,867 and $1,497, according to MNS, a New York City real estate brokerage firm. Even the most frugal saver who found a roommate would need to put away more than $2,000 in advance just to pay for a summer's worth of rent. That doesn't count living expenses or the impact of diverting that money away from one's annual college expenses.
The post's tips, however, seemed to be geared toward making money for "summer fun on the weekend" and paying for items like transportation and food. The suggestions included using Amazon Prime (which charges an annual $99 membership fee) for cheaper groceries, taking a part-time job and asking one's employer for a lunch or travel stipend.
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Bulin, who writes that she's on her third unpaid internship in New York, does not raise the subject of rent. Instead, the post, which leads with a subtitle of "make it work," focuses on ambition, effort and savvy budgeting. The wealthy benefactor, perhaps, is the unspoken secret weapon.
"It’s always important to allocate money wisely," writes Bulin, "but even more so when you aren’t bringing in an income to supplement your spending." Updated at 6:35 p.m. EST with a statement from Abigail Klem, chief brand officer for Ivanka Trump.
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Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
