Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

Employers are projecting to hire 3.4 percent more interns and 6.3 percent more co-ops in 2017 than they did in 2016, marking the first year since 2013 that employers have reported positive hiring projections for interns, co-ops, and full-time, entry-level hires, according to NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey.

This shift somewhat stabilizes—at least for now—the trend in recent years that saw positive hiring projections for FT hires, while those for interns and co-ops decreased. (See Figure 1.)

In 2017, the strongest hiring projections for interns were associated with employers with more than 20,000 employees (see Figure 2); the engineering services and utilities industries (see Figure 3); and employers in the Mid East region (see Figure 4).

On the other hand, the weakest projections were associated with employers with 501 to 1,000 employees; the computer/electronics manufacturing and motor vehicle manufacturing industries; and employers in the Midwest region.

Among respondents, 41 percent indicated that they would increase intern and/or co-op hiring in 2017; meanwhile, 42 percent indicated that they would maintain and 17 percent indicated that they would decrease hiring. These figures are consistent with those from last year’s survey, when 40.1 percent of respondents said they would increase intern and/or co-op hiring; 41.9 percent said they would maintain it; and 18 percent said they would decrease it.

NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey was conducted from November 21, 2016, to February 17, 2017, from NACE employer members; there were 276 respondents, representing 26.4 percent of all eligible respondents. NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey report will be available later this spring.

Figure 1: Hiring projections for interns, co-ops, and FT, entry-level hires: 2004-17