A new study reveals that HR internships are amongst the lowest paid when analysing interns’ pay in various sectors. This could ultimately lead future HR talent away from the profession.
New research from Invezz, a provider of information and services linked to investment, has found that HR interns are among some of the lowest paid interns in the UK.
On average, HR internships pay around £1,380 per month in the UK. Only internships in fashion, marketing, sales and design fare worse with the lowest paying around £600 a month.
In comparison, the highest earning internships are within consulting, business, finance, research and web-development. Of these, consulting interns are paid the most – averaging around £1700 a month in salary, significantly more than HR internships.
With the unemployment level expected to rise into 2021, potentially reaching 2.6 million by mid-year, it is important for HR to offer competitive internships which expose future HR talent to the industry and offers fair compensation, especially during a time where the young have been hit hardest by the pandemic.
However, the salary of the internship also greatly varies depending on what part of the country the internship is based in, showing that the wage HR internships offer could largely differ based on its geographical location. Derbyshire was found to be even more highly paying than the Capital – with the average annual salary for an intern being £22,500. This roughly equates to a monthly breakdown of £1,578. The intern salary in Derbyshire is a 6.8 per cent increase on the national average for internships.
Greater London featured third highest paying for interns, just under the West Midlands. In Greater London, interns were paid an average annual salary of £21,163. This is roughly £1503, slightly greater than the average for HR internships.
Conversely, within England, Essex was the worst paying county with interns earning an annual wage of £16,687.
Talveer Sandhu from The Knowledge Academy commented:
The job market is competitive, which is why internships are a proactive stage of attaining that necessary experience for a step on the career ladder.
In the past, internships have received negative press with many employers not paying their interns accordingly, so it is reassuring to see that many industries are breaking through that stereotype. However, it is still abundantly clear that certain sectors need to pay their interns more fairly with a realistic living wage.
*Invezz.com scoured Indeed.co.uk’s internship positions to collate the location and salary of all job postings and subsequently calculated monthly salary averages. With the job roles not advertising a salary, Invezz searched further or assumed that it did not pay or only offered travel expenses. All data was collected on 30/11/2020 and is accurate as of then.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
