More than 70% of organizations expect to increase or maintain intern hiring, according to NACE’s 2025 Internship & Co-op Report.
Nearly half expect to maintain their intern hiring at last year’s levels, while nearly a quarter expect to bring in more interns in 2024-25 than they did in 2023-24. (See Figure 1.)
However, overall intern hiring is expected to fall 3.1%, driven mainly by the largest companies across industries reporting plans to trim their intern roles.
According to respondents, their Intern hiring plans are driven by the needs of the organization (90.5%) and the state of the economy (22.9%).
NACE surveys its employer members yearly to gather benchmarks on internship and co-op programs. For the 2025 Internship & Co-op Report, NACE conducted the survey from October 16, 2024, to January 2, 2025. Overall, 247 organizations took part
in the survey, including 208 NACE member organizations, representing 24.8% of eligible member organizations, and 39 nonmember companies.
NACE’s 2025 Internship & Co-op Report is available on NACEWeb. It is free to all survey participants in MyNACE.
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The companion report, Guide to Compensation for Interns & Co-ops, provides supporting compensation information.
Kevin Gray is an associate editor at NACE. He can be reached at 
