Unpaid and highly paid internships expose widening inequality in Switzerland

The first rung on Switzerland’s career ladder now depends on a lottery: one intern earns thousands of francs, another earns nothing. Across the country, internships increasingly determine who gets a foothold in the labour market—and who is forced to finance the privilege of working. The divide is starkest between commercial employers and parts of the non-governmental sector. Some placements offer salaries, supervision and benefits. Others offer only a line on a CV.

The consequences are immediate. A student with family support or savings can accept months of unpaid work in Geneva, Lausanne or Zurich. A student without that safety net cannot. What is presented as a gateway into employment therefore becomes a filter based on private wealth.

The issue is not new. In Geneva, UN interns protested low pay in 2019. Yet the underlying structure remains intact: Switzerland has no federal law that sets a common standard for intern remuneration. Cantonal rules and collective agreements fill the gap, producing a patchwork of protections.

That regulatory vacuum turns access to professional experience into a high-stakes gamble. And as competition intensifies, the gamble is shaping an entire generation’s relationship with work.

A pharmaceutical intern near Geneva can receive up to CHF 3,000 a month before benefits are counted. Thomas Villaman, training in medical communication at a multinational company in Meyrin, earns between CHF 2,000 and CHF 3,000 monthly. His package also includes free meals, tea and coffee, and access to a gym.

His placement has the features of a genuine training position: a supervisor, a defined project and a report linked to his master’s degree. “I have a supervisor and a project to work on,” he says. “I’m going to write a report, a short thesis for my master’s degree.” The position, he explains, is intended to provide additional support rather than replace a permanent job.

At the upper end of the market, the source cites internships paying as much as CHF 3,500 per month. These placements do more than cover rent, transport and food. They allow young people to build savings while acquiring experience that employers demand.

That advantage compounds quickly. Paid interns can afford to stay in expensive employment centres, accept strategic opportunities and wait for the right next step. Their unpaid peers face a harsher calculation: work for free, borrow money or leave the race. The internship market is not merely unequal. It rewards those already equipped to enter it.

For some NGO interns, six months of work produces no salary, no allowance and no meaningful training. Nina, whose surname is withheld, says her Geneva placement quickly became a nightmare. She describes an organisation with no employees, where interns carried the workload while the manager was absent.

“I’m working in a place where there are no employees,” she says. “All the work is done by interns. And the manager is completely absent.” The training promised at the start never materialised. Instead, she accumulated overtime and shouldered responsibilities that appeared far beyond a temporary learning experience.

Her decision to speak out is deliberately political: she wants to “stop normalising these unpaid internships.” The warning reaches beyond one organisation. When unpaid work becomes routine, young people are pressured to treat exploitation as an acceptable price for experience—particularly in prestigious sectors such as international affairs, development and human rights.

Geneva’s high living costs sharpen the contradiction. The city hosts major international institutions while many aspiring professionals struggle to fund the basic cost of remaining there. An unpaid placement can therefore exclude precisely the candidates who lack independent means, narrowing the sector’s social and economic diversity.

Without enforceable standards, the promise of training can remain just that—a promise. The burden falls on interns to expose abuses individually, while organisations retain the power to define what counts as opportunity.