Once upon a time, in a world that no longer exists, graduating meant you’d step into a job with a tie, a cubicle, and maybe even a coffee mug with your name on it. Fast forward to now — you graduate with a fancy degree, impressive grades, a resume longer than your grocery list, and the job market gives you… an unpaid internship and anxiety.
Welcome to 2025, where fresh graduates are lining up not outside offices, but at the internship aisle, hoping to at least enter the professional building — even if it’s through the back door.
So, why are today’s educated, overachieving, LinkedIn-polishing grads voluntarily signing up for internships instead of full-time roles? Because full-time jobs, much like the Indian monsoon, are consistently inconsistent. Let’s unpack this comedy of economic errors.
From Side Hustle To Survival Strategy
Remember when internships were just résumé fillers? A summer fling with work, where you’d fetch coffee, attend meetings you didn’t understand, and proudly add “Excel wizard” to your CV? Well, now internships are the main course.
Thanks to a job market flatter than your neighbour’s Dalgona coffee attempt, internships are being treated like “trial jobs.” A report by a leading global career portal reveals a 103% surge in internship postings in India between 2022 and 2025, with a 25% jump in just the last year. Globally, too, internships have become the new rite of passage — not because people want them, but because they’re the only thing available that isn’t a scam or an MLM pitch.
In short, internships have become the modern-day arranged marriage — not perfect, possibly unpaid, and you’re not entirely sure what you signed up for, but hey, it might lead to stability.
Where Degrees Aren’t Enough
You graduated. You did all the right things. You even networked (ugh). But instead of job offers, you’re getting ghosted harder than your last Hinge match. The culprit? A job market that’s pretending to be selective when it’s actually broke.
In the US, youth unemployment (ages 16-24) stands at a whopping 9.4%, according to government data. In China, it’s even more tragic — a record 12 million graduates are entering the market, where 16.5% are already jobless. Many are either working low-paying survival jobs or paying brokers thousands of dollars just to land an internship.
India isn’t far behind. As per CMIE and government reports, the youth unemployment rate for the 15–29 age group is now over 10%. So, what do graduates do when they can’t find jobs? They settle. Not in love, but in labor — through internships that might or might not pay, but at least don’t ask for a 5-year experience in a “fresher” role.
Free Labour, Fresh Faces, No Strings Attached
If you’re a company in 2025, congratulations — you’re in luck. There’s a buffet of desperate, qualified graduates ready to intern for you, sometimes without pay, just so they can avoid explaining to their nosy uncle at weddings what they “do” for a living.
Take Tencent Holdings in China, which recently announced 28,000 internships over the next three years — not full-time jobs, mind you, just internships. Why? Because it’s cheap, low-risk, and socially acceptable exploitation. In India, startups, tech firms, NGOs, and even glorified Excel agencies are all cashing in.
Companies love it — interns bring enthusiasm, zero expectations, and sometimes even their own laptops. No health insurance, no paid leaves, and no maternity breaks — just pure, unadulterated ambition in human form.
Also Read: FlippED: Should All Internships Be Paid: Our Bloggers Fight It Out
Career Test Drives
One silver lining to this internship mania is that it gives young people a chance to “test the waters” before diving into a soul-crushing job. Think of internships as Tinder dates for careers — short, experimental, and hopefully not traumatic.
Internships now act as career speed-dating — you explore marketing, hate it, try HR, cry in the washroom, dabble in design, and finally end up doing content writing because you know too many adjectives. The pressure of choosing a “forever job” straight out of college has been replaced with a more trial-and-error approach.
And while the system is broken, at least these internships give students a chance to build skills, understand the market, and update their LinkedIn every few weeks — because let’s face it, that’s all that’s keeping their spirits alive.
The Job Market Is Giving “Unavailable”
Here’s the kicker — while internships might be romanticized now, the real villain is the shrinking job market. The pandemic didn’t just bring Zoom fatigue and banana bread — it also gutted hiring across sectors.
Freshers face a paradox: Jobs require experience, but gaining experience requires jobs. So they turn to internships, hoping one of them turns into a miracle. Meanwhile, full-time roles are either frozen, outsourced, or replaced by ChatGPT, and government vacancies are decreasing despite India’s millions of degree holders entering the job hunt every year.
What’s worse is that many graduates today are “overqualified and underemployed” — working delivery jobs, doing freelance gigs, or teaching online for pennies. In this gig economy, internships are like umbrellas in a hailstorm — not enough, but better than nothing.
Dear Economy, It’s Not Us, It’s Definitely You
In an ideal world, graduates would be picking between cushy corporate roles, debating 5-digit salaries, and discussing relocation benefits over brunch. Instead, they’re sending out 50 applications a day, attending unpaid internships, and learning Canva tutorials at 2 AM.
This isn’t ambition — it’s survival.
Internships have gone from being optional resume sprinkles to the main course for a generation that’s been promised everything and handed… a mousepad. The youth unemployment crisis is global, and while internships offer temporary relief, they’re no substitute for real, stable jobs.
So if you see a bright young graduate interning for free, just know — it’s not because they’re “gaining experience.” It’s because the job market looked at them, shrugged, and said, “Try again next year.”
And if you’re one of them, hang in there. Someday, your unpaid internship might just pay in actual money, not exposure.
Sources: FirstPost, Live Mint, Economic Times
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: internships, job crisis, youth unemployment, fresh graduates, careers, job market, global unemployment, india jobs, work life, future of work, graduate struggles, career advice, job hunt, employment crisis, internship life, corporate world, job search, young professionals, career struggles, job trends
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