College jobs are back – here are the highest paid internships

Students looking for summer gigs are in for a shock.

The Covid pandemic has, of course, hit this group particularly hard. Last summer, the unemployment rate among 16-24 year olds was 18.5%, about twice as high as the year before.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 47% of young people were in employment in July 2020, up from 56% a year earlier. (July is typically when youth employment peaks.)

At the same time, the internship opportunities – paid or unpaid – almost completely dried up.

“The past year presented unique challenges for college students and recent graduates trying to gain valuable internship experience, with many employers making the difficult decision to pause hiring or even scrap internships,” said Amanda Stansell, an economic data scientist at job site Glassdoor .

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“Fortunately, the job market is seeing signs of recovery, giving workers early career opportunities to not only do internships at top companies, but also earn a hefty salary,” she added.

For students looking for paid internships, more companies are actively recruiting, according to a new report from Glassdoor.

Technology companies, in particular, are using internships as a pipeline for recruitment, and that means offering highly competitive salaries, Stansell said. “It’s a great way for companies to attract talent and build their talent pipeline.”

Interns get the most out of chipmaker Nvidia, followed by Facebook and LinkedIn, where average monthly wages are over $ 8,000, according to Glassdoor. If these salaries were paid full-time, interns would bring home about $ 100,000 a year, well above the median salary in the US.

Glassdoor’s report on the highest paid internships for 2021 is based on salary ratings reported by interns between March 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021.

“One silver lining is that many of these internships are still completely remote, opening the playing field for students across the country,” said Stansell.

While scoring any of these opportunities is incredibly competitive, there are also many more internships available with other companies and an increasing number of summer jobs in general.

“We expect an increase in the number of summer jobs for teens,” including once-reliable appearances in stores and restaurants, said Vicki Salemi, a career expert at Monster.com.

Even if summer positions aren’t immediately available, more job openings will be posted as companies reopen and employers re-evaluate their needs, she said.

“It’s important to keep your eyes and ears open, if you haven’t landed one yet, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to.”

However, according to a study by the Hamilton Project and Brookings Institution, teens are generally less likely to be looking for work.

That’s partly because more academic summer programs are available and more teens are completing community service as part of their graduation requirements or to bolster their college applications, in addition to more students taking unpaid internships, which the BLS doesn’t count, according to a separate analysis by the Pew Research. Center.

The proportion of teens entering the workforce peaked 40 years ago and has been declining since then.

In 1979, nearly 60% of American teenagers had jobs, a record high. Today, just over a third, or 35%, of teens between the ages of 16 and 19 are in the workforce.

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