Panama has rolled out a new legal framework for internships designed to help more than 113,000 unemployed young people gain certified work experience — while ensuring companies do not use interns to replace permanent staff.
What Happened
The Internship Law establishes new rules allowing young Panamanians to acquire certified work experience, while giving companies a defined framework for training talent. Under the law, internships must offer a structured experience with defined functions and certification of the learning obtained.
On September 8, the Ministry of Labor and Labor Development (Mitradel) presented its intern registration platform to the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama. More than one hundred companies and business associations participated in training sessions on the law, its regulations, and how to use the platform.
The law includes specific protections for interns. Their acquired experience must be certified, and internships cannot be used to substitute permanent employment. According to the Chamber of Commerce, one of the central goals of the regulation is preventing companies from using internships to replace existing jobs.
Background
The Chamber of Commerce, in its Cámara Opina column, highlighted the scale of the challenge the law addresses. More than 113,000 young Panamanians between the ages of 15 and 29 are currently unemployed, and the youth unemployment rate stands at 19.9% — nearly double the national unemployment rate of 10.4%.
The business group noted that one of the main obstacles young people face when seeking employment is the lack of work experience. “How can you ask for experience from someone who has not yet had the opportunity to acquire it?” the Chamber asked, defending a mechanism that allows young people to enter the labor market with training and support.
Before this regulation, apart from academic internships tied to university programs, Panama lacked a specific framework with common conditions for those entering companies as interns. Now, the experience gained can be accompanied by training, protection, and a certification that facilitates future job opportunities.
What This Means for Panama
The law represents a coordinated effort between government and the private sector to tackle one of the country’s most persistent labor challenges: youth unemployment that runs nearly twice the national rate. By requiring certification and defined functions, the framework gives internships real value in the job market, potentially making them a genuine stepping stone rather than informal, unrecognized work.
For companies, the Mitradel registration platform creates a formal, transparent process for taking on interns, and the strong participation of over one hundred firms in the training sessions suggests significant private-sector interest in the program.
For young job seekers, the key protections matter: certified experience that can be presented to future employers, and a legal safeguard that internships prepare them for employment rather than displacing it. As the Chamber put it, “a well-regulated internship does not replace employment; it prepares for employment.”
What to watch next is the pace of company registrations on the Mitradel platform and how effectively the certification requirement is enforced in practice — the true test of whether the law closes the experience gap for Panama’s youth.
This story was originally reported by La Prensa.