Despite all the AI angst, tech internships are not dead. Cloudflare announced plans to hire 1,111 interns in 2026, and Shopify says it's hiring about 1,000 engineering interns this year.
I checked in with Indeed economist Allison Shrivastava, to see the broader data on this. As of September 30, Software Development, IT systems & solutions, IT infrastructure, Operations & Support, and Data & Analytics internship postings accounted for 2.7% of job titles listed. That's up from 2.2% in 2024.
Is that a lot? Shrivastava said the direction of the increase is really interesting. "We typically see internship postings decrease when postings in general decrease, so an upward trend is notable," she added.
Why is this happening? Shrivastava's theory: It could be that, as those sectors have been loose for quite a while (more people competing for fewer postings), employers are opting for temporary and lower-paid internship roles in lieu of permanent positions.
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