This article focuses on a major host of unpaid intern labor-the music industry-to examine how internships function as a challenging, intermediary step for individuals attempting to launch careers. Based on interviews and participant observation, the author finds that ambiguity plays an important role in producing and maintaining the intern economy. The author uses the term provisional labor to describe the temporary, conditional, and ambiguous standing of interns, as they simultaneously build their employability and provide inexpensive labor. The case study reveals why aspirants encounter varying opportunities in their internships, which may differ from their respective hopes, expectations, and career aspirations. Keywords internships, career, cultural work, music industry, precariousness "Greg" 1 has just finished his first day of paid work in the record industry. As we sit at a fast-food restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, he recounts the path leading him to this job. In the summer of 2006 he held an unpaid Work and Occupations 40(4) 364-397

This article considers how college resources (academic abilities, social engagement, and career skills) affect the likelihood of a successful post-graduation job search. Using survey data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project ( N = 16,659 alumni who graduated between 1976 and 2015), we find that arts graduates are increasingly likely to be lost in transition. Over recent decades, the likelihood of experiencing a prolonged job search after graduation or initial employment in an unrelated field has increased. Yet, we find that higher levels of social engagement and career skills, but not academic abilities gained through traditional instruction, are predictive of labor market success. Female and non-White alumni report lower levels of college resources, longer initial job searches, and are more likely to find work in an unrelated field. Furthermore, gender moderates the relationship between career skills and job search length such that career skill development is associated with stronger gains for men than for women.

This article looks towards the future of the intern economy by focusing on its past. What led to recent debates about the intern economy? How did it become legally possible for interns to work for free? Using the United States as my case study, I draw parallels between the current intern economy and its closest historical antecedent, the apprenticeship system. By providing a brief overview of the history of work-based learning and the unpaid internship's legal underpinnings, this article ultimately frames current lawsuits and debates as a correction to today's insufficiently scrutinized youth labour regime not unlike the apprenticeship systems of the past. In the attempt to facilitate youth transitions from school to work, yet maintain minimum wage standards, government intervention and-more imminently likely-legal decisions will, I anticipate, eventually transform the intern economy much like the Fitzgerald Act of 1937 drastically formalized apprenticeships in the United States.

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