WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White Home interns can be paid for the primary time, in a change designed to make its internship program extra accessible to lower-income college students, the Biden administration stated on Thursday.

“Too typically, unpaid federal internships have been a barrier to hardworking and gifted college students and professionals, stopping them from contributing their skills and expertise to the nation and holding them again from federal profession development alternatives,” the White Home stated in a press release.

The primary paid internships will start within the fall with a 14-week session. Interns can be paid $750 per week, in two installments, the White Home.

Cash for the salaries will come from funds already accredited by Congress this 12 months, it stated.

Unpaid interns dot the employment panorama in Washington, the place positions in each the private and non-private sector are provided with out pay as an academic alternative. Internships typically is usually a first step towards a job there.

Congress solely moved to start out paying its interns in 2019. Nonetheless, folks getting these internships remained overwhelmingly white, in accordance with a examine of interns within the 116th Congress (2019-20) by Pay Our Interns, a nonprofit group began by two former interns of shade.

Greater than half of them attended non-public universities, though only a quarter of American undergraduates achieve this, the group stated.