It is now common for university graduates and students to expect no salary at all as they try to break into the job market.

More of us are being steered into unpaid work known as "internships", or "work experience" on such a scale it is routinely viewed as a necessary step to gaining work.

With the most recent Graduate Careers Australia survey finding 42 per cent of graduates fail to find paid work in the first four months after graduation, many graduates will take the chance to access an entry-level position and potential employment even if the position is unpaid.

Employers know this, and the job ads are awash with unpaid work. 

A job ad placed by an accounting firm, after empathising with "how hard it is to find a job for those fresh graduates", seeks workers with a Bachelor or Masters degree to perform accounts payable, bank reconciliation and accounts receivable and participate hands-on in the "day to day operating of the company". 

The work is unpaid, and successful candidates will have to pay a "contract preparation fee, administration fee, insurance fee".

In exchange, the firm will "provide references for your future job applications".

Or work can be grossly underpaid. This year, a federal court imposed a $24,000 fine on a company called Crocmedia for breaching minimum wage conditions in their employment of two young people.

The court found  one young worker was paid $2940, but was entitled to $19,341, while another received nothing but was legally entitled to $5767.

This is the new normal for those of us entering the job market.

A survey conducted last year by Interns Australia found 87.5 per cent of respondents had completed an unpaid internship, with 36 per cent working unpaid for five days a week and 65 per cent working for longer than three months.

Unpaid work experience does form a useful facet of many TAFE and tertiary courses but under the Fair Work Act 2009, lawful work experience and internships should be restricted to short-term learning opportunities with skills training, the chance to observe real-life work practice, with the interns performing tasks unnecessary to daily operations.

This law bears scant resemblance to the typical placements for unpaid work amongst the hundreds of jobs advertised on job boards like Pedestrian.tv and Gumtree. 

Employers also know foreign students need to have work experience on their resume if they are to have any chance of staying in Australia.

Like workers at 7-Eleven, they can be a prime target for employers using internship to acquire free labour.

Just as it took years for the 7-Eleven scandal to come to light despite systemic abuse, very few cases in the internship market are brought to court.

This is because compliance largely rests on young workers reporting breaches.

Pragmatism, if not ignorance of the legal and moral dubiousness of what has become conventional practice in many industries, is a silencing force. 

Young job-seekers do not wish to risk endangering their careers by alienating those very people they wish to impress by taking internships in the first place.