Where is the Most Competition for Internship Roles?

Internships are an incredibly popular way for college students to bridge the gap between academia and working life. The NSCI reveals that one in five students undertook an internship in 2021, with a further proportion wanting to but not being able to because of busy academic schedules or insufficient pay (nearly one in two interns in the U.S. aren’t paid).

With so many people trying to get their foot in the door, “getting an internship you are genuinely interested in these days is like winning a raffle or the lottery,” says one college student, speaking to Forbes. But surely that’s not the case everywhere? Or for every industry? …is it?

Intrigued, Resume.io used LinkedIn Jobs to find out where in the country budding interns are up against the most competition for the same role, where availability is the lowest and the industries offering the most and least room for interns.

Methodology Behind Study

Resume.io analyzed job listings for internship positions advertised on LinkedIn Jobs for the top 100 most populous cities in the U.S. in order to explore the competition and availability of internships across America at a state, city and industry level:

Competition: the average number of daily applicants per internship in each location and industry.
Availability (States and Cities): the number of internships per 100k population in each state/city.
Availability (Industry): the number of internships per 1,000 jobs in each industry.

The industries are grouped according to LinkedIn’s own industry categories.