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The Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility is a center within the American Enterprise Institute. Our dedicated team conducts rigorous research to examine economic well-being, social and economic mobility, social capital, and other opportunity-related issues.


The American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility (COSM) seeks a full-time research assistant to work in person with scholars including Kevin Corinth, Angela Rachidi, and Scott Winship. The new research assistant will begin in summer 2025.

The research assistant will conduct extensive research on US safety-net programs, food insecurity, social capital, and intergenerational mobility, among other topics.

Apply here.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility seeks a driven, research-oriented candidate for its workforce development team. The vocation, career, and work intern will work closely with Senior Fellow Brent Orrell and staff to research the intersectional domain of workforce development policy.

Current projects include analyzing the present and future of work, the skills needed for success in the modern workforce, automation and economic trends in employment, worker attitudes and workplace culture, work as a pathway to economic mobility, and workforce issues relating to dislocated and “hidden” workers, including veterans, youth, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and the neurodiverse. The intern may also engage with certain criminal-justice-related topics, such as recidivism, desistance, and prisoner reentry, that pertain to broader team initiatives.

Apply here.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility (COSM) seeks a driven, research-oriented data intern for spring 2025. The intern will work closely with COSM scholars Kevin Corinth and Scott Winship and COSM staff on quantitative, empirically driven, and policy-informing research that aims to improve opportunity and mobility for low-income Americans. The data intern will assist with studying the determinants of economic mobility and human flourishing in America.

The COSM data intern will interact with a variety of research and policy areas, including:

  • Federal safety-net programs such as cash welfare, food assistance, and unemployment insurance;
  • Trends in social capital in America; and
  • Determinants of economic mobility and human flourishing.

The ideal COSM data intern is:

  • Interested in learning more about antipoverty and opportunity policy,
  • Motivated and comfortable working independently,
  • Open to learning new skills on the job,
  • Detail oriented, and
  • Effective at communication

The COSM data intern will be expected to:

  • Retrieve and analyze datasets,
  • Assist with data-visualization projects,
  • Produce literature reviews and memos,
  • Complete administrative and logistical tasks,
  • Perform background research for reports and scholarly publications, and
  • Fact-check and edit op-eds and blog posts.

Successful applicants should have:

  • Interest or experience studying anti-poverty policy.
  • Interest or experience analyzing data in statistical software such as Stata or R.
  • Experience studying economics and statistics—particularly as it relates to public policy.

The ideal candidate for this internship will have a passion for understanding trends in poverty and mobility as well as engaging in policy-applicable research through data analysis and quantitative methods.

Apply here.