Heard on the Street... What the Interns are Saying...

Research evidence excerpt

Heard on the Street... What the Interns are Saying...

Broadlines & Hardlines

Auto Parts Retail - Market Weight

Dollar Stores - Market Overweight

Home Improvement - Market Weight

Mass Merchants - Market Weight

Heard on the Street... What the Interns are Saying... July 15, 2026

The Wolfe Byte

We recently surveyed interns at Wolfe Research, along with partner firms, to get a sense of emerging trends, AI

impacts, and other changes affecting Gen Z. While this is one age demographic, we were interested to see what

the next generation is focused on.

(-/+) AI Concerns Top of Mind for Many... Overall Optimism Still Positive About the Future. Concerns about the impact

of AI on job security and obsolescence featured prominently in our survey. More than 50% of students said they expect

AI to slightly worsen their job prospects. At the same time, more than half were also optimistic about the future. So

while AI is a concern, it hasn't completely affected their optimism about the prospects of finding a job. We've highlighted

recent reports from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas in which 23% of layoffs YTD have cited AI as the culprit. We think

part of that is using an excuse to prune headcount in some sectors: nationally, unemployment still remains very robust.

(+/=) Claude the Overwhelming Favorite to Gain Share over Next 6 Months... While we're not surprised to see Claude

expected to gain share from ChatGPT over the next 6 months, we were surprised at how consensus it was amongst the

group. We would note that these are largely finance students who spend a lot of time using Excel, for which Claude

now has a plug-in that has helped streamline various tasks.

...ChatGPT Still Leads in Overall Search Interest, but the Enterprise Uses of Claude Are Increasingly in Focus. Looking