LAUSR

Scientific Workforce Unpaid internships are common in STEM fields, but little is known about the career trajectories of STEM graduates in unpaid versus paid positions. Fournier et al. took data from the U.K. Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey and compared whether science graduates in paid or unpaid positions 6 months after graduating successfully obtained a high salary or were working in a STEM field 3.5 years later. Results show that unpaid work was strongly associated with persistence in STEM but that there is a negative association between unpaid work and future earnings. Personal connections frequently were used by men and high socioeconomic–status graduates to find unpaid work, raising concerns about the diversity of the unpaid workforce. PLOS ONE 14 , e0217032 (2019).