Totally agree on the ethics -- my company won't do it and cringe when progressive organizations do it. It's potentially (but not always) exploitative and gives an advantage to people who can work for free. And legal compliance is actually difficult. Anyway, just sharing our experience. Good luck.

AI summary: In NYS, internships are generally required to be paid, unless specific conditions are met that allow for unpaid internships...conditions relate to the training being similar to that of an educational environment, being for the benefit of the intern, and not displacing regular employees.

I would check state and federal law on the specifics of what is required for something to be an internship.

Not sure that's correct. Here are data from American University that tracks content from US/Canada by different models in 2022: kogod.american.edu/autoindex/2022. If you're looking at North American content (US + CAN + MEX) obviously would be even higher. (Have not vetted the numbers.)

For decades, planners, geographers, and economists have categorized industries by the geographic areas they serve. "Local" industries serve nearby customers. They include grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, etc. Local industries are present pretty much everywhere to some level.

“Traded” industries, on the other hand, serve customers around the country or the globe: cars from Detroit, movies from Hollywood, pharmaceuticals from Boston.

Because they serve global markets, traded industries tend to be spatially concentrated. This map of auto manufacturing, for example, shows how it has a major presence in about 10 US metros, a minor presence in 15 or so more, and no presence at all in most metros

Local and traded industries play different roles in metropolitan economies: traded industries bring money into the metro from the outside, while local industries provide the bulk of employment.

Because of this, economic development strategies often focus on attracting or developing traded industries. Here's an example from work @masseconomics.bsky.social did with the Memphis Chamber of Commerce

blog.memphischamber.com/cluster-grow...

In our paper, we show that the local-traded distinction isn’t exhaustive. Specifically, we identify a third type: “regional” industries, which are present in almost every metro--but are spatially concentrated *within* each metro.

For example, here are maps showing the spatial profile of Grocery Wholesalers, a regional industry. At the metro scale, wholesalers have a moderate presence pretty much everywhere. That makes sense--food distribution is a universal need

But at the *county* level, you see much more spatial concentration: in most metros, grocery wholesalers are concentrated into 1-2 districts, from which they supply the whole metropolitan area

Compare that to the maps for auto manufacturing above, or to these maps of grocery stores, a true local industry. At the metro level, Grocery Wholesalers look like local industries. But at the county level, they look like traded ones

You see the same pattern across lots of industries: if you look simultaneously at metro and county-level Location Quotients, they fall into 3 main groups: high/high (Local industries), low/low (Traded), and high/low (Regional).

Quintessential regional industries are support activities for other businesses: facilities maintenance, logistics, printing services. Construction and some kinds of manufacturing (craft beer, for example) are also prominent.

Regional industries are massive: they accounted for 30% of US employment in 2017--36 million jobs, almost twice as many as traded industries. And they’re growing fast: employment in regional industries grew by 21% from 2001 to 2021, compared to 12% in the rest of the economy

Moreover, jobs in regional industries pay well: average earnings were $70k, almost as high as traded industries and 75% more than local industries.

They're also important spaces for entrepreneurship: there are 3x as many privately held companies in regional industries as in traded ones, and average sales are 2x local industries