IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/26729.html

The Demand for Interns

Author

Listed:
  • David A. Jaeger
  • John M. Nunley
  • Alan Seals
  • Eric J. Wilbrandt

Abstract

We describe the demand for interns in the U.S. using ads from an internship-specific website. We find that internships are more likely to be paid when more closely associated with a specific occupation, when the local labor market has lower unemployment, and when the local and federal minimum wage are the same. A résumé audit study with more than 11,500 applications reveals that employers are more likely to respond positively when internship applicants have previous internship experience. Employers are also less likely to respond to applicants with black-sounding names and when the applicant is more distant from the firm.

Suggested Citation

  • David A. Jaeger & John M. Nunley & Alan Seals & Eric J. Wilbrandt, 2020. "The Demand for Interns," NBER Working Papers 26729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26729
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w26729.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S. Michael Gaddis & Raj Ghoshal, 2015. "Arab American Housing Discrimination, Ethnic Competition, and the Contact Hypothesis," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 660(1), pages 282-299, July.
    2. Nunley, John M. & Pugh, Adam & Romero, Nicholas & Seals, R. Alan, 2016. "College major, internship experience, and employment opportunities: Estimates from a résumé audit," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 37-46.
    3. Jaeger, David A. & Nunley, John M. & Seals, R. Alan & Shandra, Carrie L. & Wilbrandt, Eric J., 2023. "The demand for interns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 372-390.
    4. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2011. "Robust Inference With Multiway Clustering," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 238-249, April.
    5. Joanna N. Lahey, 2008. "Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(1).
    6. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Jonathan Guryan, 2011. "Studying Discrimination: Fundamental Challenges and Recent Progress," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 479-511, September.
    7. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1279-1333.
    8. Hamilton, Gillian, 1996. "The Market for Montreal Apprentices: Contract Length and Information," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 496-523, October.
    9. Shushanik Margaryan & Nils Saniter & Mathias Schumann & Thomas Siedler, 2022. "Do Internships Pay Off? The Effects of Student Internships on Earnings," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(4), pages 1242-1275.
    10. Josef Fersterer & Jörn‐Steffen Pischke & Rudolf Winter‐Ebmer, 2008. "Returns to Apprenticeship Training in Austria: Evidence from Failed Firms," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(4), pages 733-753, December.
    11. John M. Nunley & Adam Pugh & Nicholas Romero & R. Alan Seals, 2017. "The Effects of Unemployment and Underemployment on Employment Opportunities," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 70(3), pages 642-669, May.
    12. Jaeger, David A. & Arellano-Bover, Jaime & Karbownik, Krzysztof & Martínez Matute, Marta & Nunley, John M. & Seals Jr., R. Alan & Almunia, Miguel & Alston, Mackenzie & Becker, Sascha O. & Beneito, Pil, 2021. "The Global COVID-19 Student Survey: First Wave Results," IZA Discussion Papers 14419, IZA Network @ LISER.
    13. Lahey, Joanna N. & Beasley, Ryan A., 2009. "Computerizing audit studies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 508-514, June.
    14. Jaison R. Abel & Richard Deitz & Yaquin Su, 2014. "Are recent college graduates finding good jobs?," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 20.
    15. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue nov.
    16. Wallis, Patrick, 2008. "Apprenticeship and Training in Premodern England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 832-861, September.
    17. David J. Deming, 2017. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1593-1640.
    18. Amanda Pallais, 2014. "Inefficient Hiring in Entry-Level Labor Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(11), pages 3565-3599, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:osf:socarx:5ctms_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Melo, Vitor & Rocha, Hugo Vaca Pereira & Sigaud, Liam & Warren, Patrick L. & Gaddis, S. Michael, 2024. "Understanding Discrimination in College Admissions: A Field Experiment," SocArXiv 5ctms, Center for Open Science.
    3. Jaeger, David A. & Nunley, John M. & Seals, R. Alan & Shandra, Carrie L. & Wilbrandt, Eric J., 2023. "The demand for interns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 372-390.
    4. Doerrenberg, Philipp & Duncan, Denvil & Li, Danyang, 2024. "The (in)visible hand: Do workers discriminate against employers?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    5. Ian Burn & Patrick Button & Luis Felipe Munguia Corella & David Neumark, 2019. "Older Workers Need Not Apply? Ageist Language in Job Ads and Age Discrimination in Hiring," NBER Working Papers 26552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Ilse Tobback & Dieter Verhaest & Stijn Baert, 2024. "Internships, Hiring Outcomes and Underlying Mechanisms: A Stated Preferences Experiment," De Economist, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 25-48, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Samuel Cole & Zachary Cowell & John M. Nunley & R. Alan Seals Jr, 2022. "The Distribution of Occupational Tasks in the United States: Implications for a Diverse and Aging Population," Papers 2205.00497, arXiv.org.
    2. Lee, Zeewan, 2022. "Returning to work: The role of soft skills and automatability on unretirement decisions," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 22(C).
    3. Nunley, John M. & Pugh, Adam & Romero, Nicholas & Seals, R. Alan, 2016. "College major, internship experience, and employment opportunities: Estimates from a résumé audit," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 37-46.
    4. John M. Nunley & Adam Pugh & Nicholas Romero & Richard Alan Seals, Jr., 2015. "Unemployment, Underemployment, and Employment Opportunities: Results from a Correspondence Audit," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2015-13, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
    5. John M. Nunley & Adam Pugh & Nicholas Romero & Richard Alan Seals, Jr., 2014. "Unemployment, Underemployment, and Employment Opportunities: Results from a Correspondence Audit of the Labor Market for College Graduates," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2014-04, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
    6. Vahagn Jerbashian, 2019. "Automation and Job Polarization: On the Decline of Middling Occupations in Europe," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 81(5), pages 1095-1116, October.
    7. Laura S. Zilian & Stella S. Zilian & Georg Jäger, 2021. "Labour market polarisation revisited: evidence from Austrian vacancy data," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 55(1), pages 1-17, December.
    8. Virginia Minni, 2023. "Making the invisible hand visible: Managers and the allocation of workers to jobs," STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series 72, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    9. Wojciech Hardy & Roma Keister & Piotr Lewandowski, 2016. "Technology or Upskilling? Trends in the Task Composition of Jobs in Central and Eastern Europe," HKUST IEMS Working Paper Series 2016-40, HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies, revised Dec 2016.
    10. Armanda Cetrulo & Dario Guarascio & Maria Enrica Virgillito, 2020. "Anatomy of the Italian occupational structure: concentrated power and distributed knowledge," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 29(6), pages 1345-1379.
    11. Lucas van der Velde, 2020. "Within Occupation Wage Dispersion and the Task Content of Jobs," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(5), pages 1161-1197, October.
    12. Michael J. Böhm & Hans-Martin von Gaudecker & Felix Schran, 2024. "Occupation Growth, Skill Prices, and Wage Inequality," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 201-243.
    13. David Dorn & Florian Schoner & Moritz Seebacher & Lisa Simon & Ludger Woessmann, 2024. "Multidimensional Skills on LinkedIn Profiles: Measuring Human Capital and the Gender Skill Gap," Papers 2409.18638, arXiv.org, revised May 2025.
    14. Emilio Colombo & Alberto Marcato, 2021. "Skill Demand and Labour Market Concentration: Theory and Evidence from Italian Vacancies," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis2104, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    15. Blanas, Sotiris & Oikonomou, Rigas, 2023. "COVID-induced economic uncertainty, tasks and occupational demand," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    16. Cnossen, Femke & Piracha, Matloob & Tchuente, Guy, 2021. "Learning the Right Skill: The Returns to Social, Technical and Basic Skills for Middle-Educated Graduates," GLO Discussion Paper Series 979, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    17. Stephen Drinkwater, 2021. "Brexit and the ‘left behind’: Job polarization and the rise in support for leaving the European Union," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(6), pages 569-588, November.
    18. Amanda Chuan & Christian Lyhne Ibsen, 2022. "Skills for the Future? A Life Cycle Perspective on Systems of Vocational Education and Training," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(3), pages 638-664, May.
    19. WU, Yunxia & LI, Lei & Zheng, Yanyan, 2024. "The impact of digitization in manufacturing on female employment and gender wage gap," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    20. Amanda Pallais & Emily Glassberg Sands, 2015. "Why the Referential Treatment: Evidence from Field Experiments on Referrals," NBER Working Papers 21357, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26729. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.