National Intern Day is an opportunity to celebrate interns and the value they bring to organizations, but it should also prompt leaders to ask a bigger question: How are we creating the experiences that will prepare the workforce of the future?

For decades, entry-level jobs served as the primary bridge between education and the workplace. They gave people the opportunity to gain experience, learn workplace norms, and build the skills needed to launch a career.

Today, that pathway is evolving.

Recent SAP SuccessFactors research found that the share of open entry-level jobs has declined by 10% since 2021, while openings across the ten most common entry-level job titles fell 35% between 2024 and 2025. At the same time, organizations continue to cite future skills shortages as a growing concern.

That creates an important challenge: organizations are focused on building the workforce they will need tomorrow, while many of the traditional ways people gained experience are changing today.

The experience gap

One of the biggest challenges facing early talent today isn't finding ambition or education—it's finding opportunities to build experience.

Employers increasingly expect candidates to arrive with practical skills, adaptability, and workplace readiness. Yet many of the capabilities that determine long-term success are developed through real-world experience rather than classroom instruction.

As AI reshapes work and takes on tasks typically assigned to entry-level talent, that experience becomes even more valuable. This is where internships take on new significance. Rather than focusing on low-level, manual tasks, in today’s world it’s increasingly essential that internships provide experiences that allow early talent to apply what they’ve learned, navigate real business challenges, and develop confidence and judgement.

Internships as a workforce investment

The value of internships extends well beyond helping individuals launch their careers. They also help organizations develop the future workforce they hope to hire.

Our research found that 81% of early talent believe work-based learning experiences made them more competitive in the job market. That reflects a broader shift: experience is becoming an increasingly important differentiator for people entering the workforce.

Organizations that invest in internships aren't simply creating a recruiting pipeline. They're helping build the capabilities, professional skills, and workplace readiness that future business success depends on.

They also gain an earlier opportunity to understand emerging talent, build relationships, and expose future employees to their culture, ways of working, and business challenges.

Rethinking how careers begin

Much of today's workforce conversation focuses on skills. But skills don't develop in a vacuum—they develop through experience.

Learning how to collaborate across teams. Receiving feedback. Solving ambiguous problems. Navigating workplace dynamics. These moments shape professional capability in ways that training alone can’t.

That's why internships have become more valuable in the AI era, not less.

As organizations rethink how work gets done, they should also rethink how people gain the experience needed to succeed in that work. The organizations that invest in those experiences today will be better positioned to build the talent, skills, and capabilities they need tomorrow.

Because while technology continues to change the nature of work, people still learn to work by doing it.