Finding an internship is getting trickier
The first rung of the career ladder looks more elusive
As ambitious students everywhere will know, there’s been a lot of talk around the decline of internships this year, as top companies have looked to cut costs by reducing the amount of young workers they’re welcoming onto their sought-after summer programs.
On Monday, for example, the FT reported that Goldman Sachs took on 200 fewer undergrads for its ultra-competitive summer analyst internship this year… while JPMorgan slashed their analyst class of ‘24 by 10% (600 interns). Big banks aren’t the only ones grabbing headlines for their shrinking college student offerings either: Tesla caught some flak in May after rescinding summer internship offers just weeks before successful applicants were due to start.
Limited experience
Paid or unpaid, internships have become a tried-and-tested method for thousands of young people to get their first real taste of the corporate world. However, per data from student job search site Handshake (reported by Bloomberg), some key industries have been cooling on the concept, with internship postings down in tech (-14%) and financial services (-13%) year-over-year in May ‘24.
Similarly, data from the Indeed Hiring Lab, provided by its Director of North American Economics Research Nick Bunker, also broadly confirms the internship cooldown. While the number of Indeed job posts with “internship” or “intern” in the title was up from 2019 at the start of the year, listings have seriously tapered since, coming in well below 2022 and 2023 levels from February onwards.
Whether what we’re seeing indicates a growing shift away from internships, or just a correction from a post-pandemic new blood boom, the decline in postings is causing competition for roles to heat up: there were over 315,000 applicants for Goldman’s ~2,700 summer analyst positions in 2024, making a spot on the program more exclusive than a place at Harvard.
