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If McDonald's can afford to hire low-skill people for minimum wage across the US, so can companies for under-skilled interns. Not paying someone for work isn't cool unless it's a volunteer position. Businesses shouldn't be getting volunteer labor. Non-profits and, maybe, governments are the only ones that should be getting volunteer interns.

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McDonald's lobbied to pay minors, as new hires, less than minimum wage, which is still allowed. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/32-minimum-wage...

Perhaps a parallel to internships.

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that, but will note that it's only for 90 days (which would cover most summer jobs, though) and the employer must pay more if the state/local minimum wage doesn't have the same under 20 exemption.

And yes, there is some parallel to internships which are generally paid at a rather low rate (often lower than the lowest equivalent employee; a CS intern is going to get paid less than a 1st year out of college new hire developer). But they're still being paid, and it's still the minimum wage (even though it's a lower minimum wage than for those over 20).

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