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Actualizado el 01/14/2026
You’re taking the first steps toward your dream career.
That could very well mean doing an internship in the field. But is it worth the time and effort?
Many students and recent graduates question if internships give you an edge. According to the data, the answer is yes - internships make a huge difference to your career.
According to Forbes data, interns are almost 25 percent more likely to secure full-time employment within six months of graduation than their non-intern peers.
Knowing the latest internship statistics can help you make informed decisions about your career, gain a competitive edge in the job market, and even land your dream job faster.
So, in this article, we’ll look at the most important statistics you need to know.
Let’s dive in!
23 General Internship Statistics
Before we get into the details, here are some of the most important internship statistics you need to know:
Recent studies show that between 21.5 percent and 47 percent of college students complete internships during their academic careers. (NCSI report)
That means that there are approximately 4.1 million student interns every year.
Internships last around 18 and a half weeks on average. (
Bureau of Labor Statistics
)
Those are 128 days and roughly 1,038 working hours.
Interns are almost 25 percent more likely than non-interns to start a full-time position within 6 months of graduation. (LinkedIn)
It gets even better. Over 66 percent of interns secure a full-time job after their internship, and their salaries average $15,000 higher than non-interns! (NACE)
Interns can expect to make between $16.56 and $20.82 per hour. (Indeed)
But that pay rate is nearly 41 percent less than the average worker's wage. (NACE)
Over 40 percent of internships remain unpaid.
Four out of ten interns work for free, which means approximately 1.6 million interns will be unpaid in 2025.
Women are three times more likely than men to complete multiple internships.
Over 70 percent of employers make full-time job offers to their interns! (Career Connections Center)
And a further 80 percent of those interns accept.
Over 71 percent of new hires who were previously interns stay after their first year as a paid employee. (Yello)
67.3 percent of students who didn't pursue internships said they wanted to but faced obstacles with finding or maintaining one. (NCSI)
Nearly 60 percent of those students' biggest problems were not being able to find an internship or not knowing how to look for one.
Internships themselves usually last four and a half months on average.
And over 36.4 percent of survey respondents report they are extremely satisfied with their internship experience.
In terms of flexibility, internships are evenly split. Over 47.8 percent of them are conducted in person, while 44.9 percent are remote.
On average, recruitment statistics point out that it takes over eight months to find an intern. (NACE)
But it might be worth it for companies. Globally, employers save over two billion dollars yearly through internships.
There are currently over 75 thousand internship roles open across the USA alone.
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Quick Tip
Want to land your dream internship? Check out our guide on how to get an internship to get started.
26 Internship Compensation Statistics
Understanding how much an internship typically pays can help you negotiate better terms and know your worth.
Here's what the numbers tell us:
Approximately 61 percent of internships are paid. (Zippia)
However, unpaid internships are most common in social work and similar fields.
Paid internships are also 32 percent more likely to lead to full-time employment than unpaid ones.
Paid interns are also more likely to receive full-time employment and higher salary offers than their unpaid counterparts. (NACE)
How many hours you work does factor into this. While 71 percent of full-time interns are compensated, only 26 percent of part-time interns can expect a salary. (NBER)
Some of the highest-paying internships are in tech, with monthly salaries exceeding $9,000. (Glassdoor)
The highest-paying company is Stripe, which leads with an average intern salary of $9,064 per month.
One of the highest-paid internships is in investment banking, where interns earn an average of $30.61 per hour.
It’s not surprising, given that the finance industry offers the highest percentage of paid internships to begin with - 76 percent! (Indeed)
According to research, interns in human resources can expect some of the lowest wages, around $17.33. (Carlson School of Management)
Marketing and sales rank as the second lowest-paid internships, averaging $18.51 per hour.
Meanwhile, in fields like consulting, accounting, and IT, the average pay for an intern is approximately $22 per hour.
Interns in operations and production can earn an average of $20.44 per hour.
However, over 60 percent of interns in the U.S. House of Representatives are unpaid. (CompareCamp)
Generally, interns earn about 41 percent less per hour than the average worker in the same industry.
Less than 15 percent of employers offer signing bonuses to interns. (NACE)
That bonus, on average, is just under $2,500. (CompareCamp)
At 74 percent, the majority of employers don’t offer 401(k) plans to interns. (CompareCamp)
The lucky ones who get this benefit are a mere 26 percent.
It looks bleak for medical benefits, too. An overwhelming 82 percent of companies don’t offer interns any medical coverage.
So, less than 18 percent of interns have medical insurance.
Of all unpaid interns, 81 percent are women. (NACE)
Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement shows that only 35 percent of women receive pay during their internships, compared to 58 percent of men. (Binghamton)
The average cost savings for companies per unpaid intern is approximately $15,000 compared to hiring a full-time employee. (Novoresume)
Despite all this, more than 59 percent of employers offer to help with travel expenses for their interns. (The Access Group)
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Quick Tip
Looking to negotiate your internship salary? Check out our salary negotiation tips to get the compensation you deserve.
21 Employment and Career Impact Statistics
Are you wondering how an internship affects your career growth?
Some of these statistics show just how powerful internships can be for your professional future:
Interns are more than 85 percent more likely to secure full-time employment after graduation compared to non-interns. (NACE)
And at least 66 percent of interns will get a full-time job at the same company. (CompareCamp)
If you look at five-year retention rates, in-house interns are at nearly 44 percent. (NACE)
Meanwhile, employees who interned at a different company are at 37.3 percent.
Since you’re four times likelier to get a job on LinkedIn if you have a connection with someone there, fostering relationships during your internship can be incredibly useful for your career down the road. (Forbes)
According to NACE again, non-interns receive an average of 0.77 job offers after graduation.
Unpaid interns can expect slightly better odds - 0.95 job offers on average.
But paid interns can expect nearly twice as many job offers - 1.61!
Former interns earn starting salaries of approximately $15,000 higher than non-interns. (Flair.hr)
Interns experience 15 percent lower unemployment rates within five years of graduation. (Fast Company)
Students who intern are also 6 percent more likely to maintain steady employment over their first five years.
Internship experience can lead to 3.4 percent higher grades in related coursework.
Only 25 percent of job seekers would mention a canceled internship on their resume. (CompareCamp)
The remaining 85 percent who skip it cite that they don’t have enough know-how gained from the internship for it to be worth mentioning.
51.8 percent of interns become full-time employees at their internship company after graduation.
Nearly 70 percent of students pursue an internship to gain experience and important skills in a specific field. (NSCI)
However, one in four students interns to explore different career paths.
NACE reports that employers are seeking interns with excellent soft skills - communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills are top of the list.
Research from Beyond Academy in the UK says that an internship can also reduce the average time it takes to reach a director level by 34 percent.
If you’re looking for a job in the public sector, pay attention - over 89 percent of employees in Congress have previous internship experience. (CompareCamp)
Understanding the demographic makeup of internship programs can help identify areas where more equity and inclusion are needed:
Research by NSCI shows that White students, at 23.6 percent, are most likely to participate in an internship.
In contrast, Native Hawai’ian and Pacific Islander students are the least likely to have internship experience - barely 3.3 percent of them have participated.
Still, the majority of respondents, 76-96 percent from all racial backgrounds, have never participated in an internship.
The survey by NACE points out that 71 percent of their intern respondents are White.
The same demographic makes up 74 percent of the intern population.
About 6.6 percent of interns are Black. However, only 6 percent of them are paid interns.
That means that 94 percent of Black interns are unpaid.
Asian-American students are the most likely to be paid interns.
Hispanic and multiracial students, on the other hand, typically don’t get internships.
Internships are distributed roughly between 35 percent to men and 65 percent to women.
Despite this, women are far more likely to secure unpaid internships than men.
In the same NACE survey as earlier, 74 percent of the sample population were women.
Over 81 percent of them accounted for unpaid internships.
Furthermore, 75 percent of women will take on multiple internships, as opposed to only 25 percent of men. (Wisconsin Center for Education Research)
First-generation students are 52 percent more likely to take unpaid internships. (The Forage)
In comparison, only 39 percent of non-first-generation students would take an unpaid internship. (CCWT)
That said, students from lower-income backgrounds are 30 percent more likely to secure paid internships.
This is because those students whose parents are highly educated are therefore more likely to afford an unpaid internship.
Meanwhile, 40 percent of students who couldn’t participate in an internship, despite wanting to, say that it was because they needed to find a paid job. (NSCI)
The rise of remote work has transformed internship programs, too. Here's what the data shows about virtual internships:
At 68.2 percent, the majority of interns complete an internship within their zip code location. (NSCI)
However, when interns do travel, it’s an average of 315 miles (or 507 km) to reach the organization they’re interning at.
44.9 percent of internships are conducted remotely, and 47.8 percent are completed in person. (NSCI)
So, only 7.2 percent of internships follow a hybrid model.
However, according to NACE, hybrid internships are going to be the most popular type and these numbers are expected.
Over 64 percent of employers state that they plan to offer their interns a hybrid model.
Entirely remote internships still provide a great opportunity, though, and over 80 percent of employers offer full-time positions to former remote interns. (NACE)
However, online internships are likelier to be unpaid. (WCER)
This means that lower-income students can rarely afford a remote internship.
And 22 percent of virtual interns expressed concerns about the quality of their experience. (NACE)
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Quick Tip
Looking to succeed in a remote internship? Check out our remote work tips for proven strategies.
15 Location and Geographic Statistics
Location plays a crucial role in internship opportunities and experiences. Here's what the numbers tell us:
Only 8.7 percent of graduates in the UK enter the job market with internship experience. (Beyond Academy)
That means that 10.9 million people in the UK are looking for a job with zero experience after graduation.
However, the internship rates depend on universities, too. Students from the top 10 highest-ranking universities have an internship rate of 19 percent.
Compared to that, four out of every ten US students have undergone an internship. (Gallup)
That means there are at least 300,000 interns in the USA annually. (Zippia)
Out of all of them, more than 70 percent are hired at the same company they interned with.
However globally, almost 58 percent of interns receive a full-time job offer once their internship is over. (Enterprise Apps Today)
But many American students don’t stop at one internship - more than 51 percent of students who get an internship will complete more than just one. (Forage)
Across the US, interns in coastal cities tend to be the most well-paid.
Hourly wages for interns in San Francisco, CA, are the highest, with over $26.64 per hour. (StandoutCV)
Boston, MA, is where interns can expect an average of $21.66 per hour, making it the second-best city for paid internships in the US.
However, it’s projected that there will be over 1.65 million unpaid interns in the USA.
International students in the USA, particularly those on F1 visas, are much more likely to be paid interns. It’s very rare for them to take on an unpaid internship. (NACE)
In the USA, Jersey City has the lowest competition for internships – there’s one position available for 94 residents.
But down south the competition is fierce. In Laredo, Texas, there are 21,346 residents per internship.
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Quick Tip
Considering relocating for an internship? Learn all about writing a country-specific resume for Canada or Australia.
Key Takeaways
These are the 132 most relevant internship statistics to help you decide the next steps for your career!
By now, we’re sure you can navigate the job market based on the latest statistics and trends and even predict what the best decision is for you.
If you need any more information to help you on your job hunt, just check out our career blog for more professional advice!
