Today's internships are nearly twice as competitive as they were just last year.

That's according to career site Handshake, whose 2025 Internship Index says the average applications per internship skyrocketed to 109 for 2024-2025, compared to 62 in 2023-2024 and 43 in 2022-2023. That means that internships posted on Handshake are seeing around two-and-a-half times as many applicants as they did just two years ago.

Internships in the technology sector were the most competitive with 273 applications per posting, followed by financial services at 192 and professional services at 187. Those were up from 161, 100, and 109 applications per posting last year, respectively.

The report, which used Handshake platform data and a survey of more than 6,000 college students and alumni, cites declining internship postings on the platform, which are down double digits each of the last three years. It also refers to an increasing share of undergraduates applying to internships — 41% of class of 2025 users have applied to an internship through the Handshake platform versus 34% of the class of 2023 at the time of graduation.

That decline in postings doesn't mean that internships are going away, according to Randy Tarnowski, director of research at Handshake.

"I would say employers, from what we've heard … are actually doubling down in ways on their early talent programs," Tarnowski tells CNBC Make It. "I think employers are a lot more bullish than they had been in the past."

Rather, Tarnowski thinks that it's a correction after a surge in postings immediately after the Covid pandemic.

"This mirrors, I think, some macroeconomic trends that we've seen," Tarnowski says. "We're in this interesting place right now where we're leveling out from that 2022 hiring boom."

That leaves today's students in an awkward spot. A student in the study called it a "pressure cooker," citing the stresses that students can face when struggling to find internships.

One student experiencing that stress is Justin Rogers, a junior majoring in finance and marketing at Elon University.

"I've just been having a lot of frustration," he says. "I've just reached a dead end with it."

Rogers says he has applied to more than 100 internships and hasn't yet received one. He mainly applies through company websites, as he says that is the guidance he was given from the Elon Career Center.

 "[It] makes you a little anxious as well because I'm running really close to summer now, and this is my last summer before I graduate to have that internship position," he says. "A lot of my friends [are] in the same boat."

Tarnowski says while the process can be stressful, the positives of an internship make it worth the trouble.

"If anything, the value of an internship has really gone up," he says. "I do think the trends we're seeing around internships and students' enthusiasm increasingly becoming part of the college to career pipeline like that is a really great opportunity."

Despite his frustrations, Rogers agrees, calling internships a necessity.

"I know I have to continue working away at it because it's something that's just part of life," he says. "I need to have an internship, I need to have experience to get a full-time job, and this is the only way to do it."

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