Summer is just one flip of the calendar away, and for some companies that means welcoming a new group of seasonal interns to the office. An internship program can be mutually beneficial: giving companies more hands on deck and interns helpful professional experience. However, some recent incidents of unpaid interns suing their employers over alleged Fair Labor Standards Act violations, as well as relatively new U.S. Department of Labor guidance for internships, have caused many companies to have second thoughts about bringing on this type of temporary help. In fact, a new survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows overall intern hiring is down 3.4 percent in 2014.
“There are fewer internship opportunities than there were previously, no question,” Camille Olson, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw and cochairwoman of its national complex litigation practice group, told CorpCounsel.com.
