Employee Training Statistics (2026)

US organizations with 100 or more employees spent $102.8 billion on training in 2025, up 4.9%, or $874 per learner for about 40 hours a year, according to Training magazine's annual industry report. The Association for Talent Development's narrower measure puts direct learning spend at $1,254 per employee and formal hours actually used at 13.7. Employers expect 39% of workers' existing skills to be transformed or outdated by 2030, and only 15% of employees say their manager has helped them build a career plan in the past six months.

The training statistics that rank are a 94% retention figure from a 2018 LinkedIn survey, a 218% income claim from a 2000 study comparing mid-1990s firms, and a forgetting-curve percentage that appears in no paper. This page uses the 2024 and 2025 Training magazine reports, ATD's 2025 benchmarks, LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report, the World Economic Forum's 2025 jobs report, Gallup's 15,066-person upskilling study, Pew and the meta-analysis on whether training works, with sample and date on each.

How much US employers spend, and how many hours

Training magazine's 2025 Training Industry Report, its 44th, surveys its database of US organizations with 100 or more employees and projects the results across a Dun & Bradstreet universe of 152,572 such organizations.

ATD's 2025 State of the Industry, from 539 organizations of mixed size, measures direct learning expenditure, meaning internal and external services and tuition reimbursement, and hours actually used. It found $1,254 per employee in 2024, down $29, 13.7 formal learning hours used per employee, down from 17.4, and a cost of $165 per hour, up 34%. The median learning department had 14 staff and 75% of them sat on the senior leadership team. The two surveys measure different things, which is why $874 and $1,254 are both current. The last federal measurement of employer training, a 1995 BLS survey, found 69.8% of establishments with 50 or more employees providing formal training and about 70% of training hours informal; no federal series has run since. Our onboarding statistics page covers the first weeks of that spend.

How training is delivered

By share of training hours in 2025, per Training magazine: online or computer-based 34%, unchanged; instructor-led classroom 28%, up from 27%; virtual classroom or webcast 24%, down from 27%; blended 22%, down from 24%; mobile 6%; social learning 6%; AI-delivered 2%; augmented or virtual reality under 1%. The pandemic shift to virtual delivery has partly reversed: blended learning was 32% of hours in 2023 and 22% in 2025, while classroom delivery stopped falling. ATD reports that live instructor-led classrooms remain the most common format without publishing a percentage. Our 30-60-90 day plan template covers how to mix them.

What employees want, and the retention link

The largest US employee survey on this is Gallup's American Upskilling Study for Amazon, from 15,066 workers in June 2021. Fifty-seven percent were extremely or very interested in an upskilling program, 52% had taken part in one in the past year, 36% through their employer, 65% said an upskilling opportunity was extremely or very important when deciding whether to take a new job, 61% said the same about staying in their current one, and 48% were extremely or very likely to switch to an employer that offered it. Participants earned about $8,000 more a year than non-participants, a correlation not an effect. Pew's 2023 survey of 5,188 workers found 44% extremely or very satisfied with their opportunities for training and skill development and 33% with promotion opportunities. Gallup's 2024 panel of 79,087 found 30% strongly agreeing someone at work encourages their development, down from 36% in March 2020.

On the employer side, LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report, from 937 learning and HR professionals and 679 learners worldwide, found 88% of organizations concerned about retention and ranking learning opportunities as their top retention strategy, 84% of employees agreeing that learning adds purpose to their work, and only 15% saying their manager had helped them build a career plan in the past six months, down 5 points. Thirty-six percent of organizations qualified as career-development champions and 33% had no program or were just starting. Our employee turnover statistics page puts career development at 18.9% of coded reasons for leaving, the largest single category.

Skills gaps and reskilling

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, from more than 1,000 employers representing 14.1 million workers in 55 economies, expects 39% of workers' existing skills to be transformed or outdated between 2025 and 2030, down from 44% in the 2023 edition. Of every 100 workers, employers expect 59 to need training by 2030: 29 upskilled in their current role, 19 upskilled and redeployed, and 11 unlikely to get the reskilling they need. Sixty-three percent of employers named skills gaps the biggest barrier to transformation, 85% plan to prioritize upskilling, 70% expect to hire for new skills and 40% plan to reduce staff whose skills become less relevant. These are global employer expectations, not US measurements. In LinkedIn's survey, 49% of learning professionals said executives were concerned employees lacked the skills to execute strategy. ATD's organizations ranked bridging skills gaps first and leadership development second, at 33%, among future priorities.

AI and training

AI-delivered training was 2% of training hours in 2025, and management training, not AI, was the area most organizations expected to fund more in 2026, at 30%, with AI training at 25%. On the workforce side, Gallup's June 2025 data found 40% of US employees using AI at work at least a few times a year, up from 21% in 2023, while 22% said their organization had communicated a clear AI plan and 30% that it had guidelines or formal policies. Pew found 16% of US workers in late 2024 saying at least some of their work was done with AI. Among learning professionals, 71% were exploring or integrating AI into their work, and Coursera's platform data showed enterprise generative AI course enrollments up 234% in a year. The gap between 40% of workers using AI and 2% of training hours delivered through it is the headline. Our AI in the workplace statistics page covers adoption in full.

Manager training

Managers are the training gap employees feel most directly. Only 15% say their manager helped them build a career plan, 50% of learning professionals name lack of manager support as the top barrier to career development, and 71% of organizations offer leadership training. Gallup's global data put manager engagement at 22% in 2025, down from 31% in 2022, with 79% of managers engaged at best-practice organizations. Management and supervisory training was the content area most expected to receive more funding in 2026. Our micromanagement statistics page covers what untrained managers do instead.

Does training work? The measured answer

Arthur, Bennett, Edens and Bell's 2003 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology pooled 397 effect sizes from studies between 1960 and 2000 and found medium-to-large effects of organisational training at every level: 0.60 on reactions, 0.63 on learning across 234 studies, 0.62 on job behavior across 122 studies, and 0.62 on organisational results across 26 studies. Training works, on average, at about the same magnitude at every stage. What is forgotten is less clear than the slogans suggest. Murre and Dros's 2015 replication of Ebbinghaus found one subject retaining 47% of nonsense syllables after 20 minutes, 32% after a day and 4% after a month, close to Ebbinghaus's 58%, 34% and 21%. It is a memory experiment on syllables, not job skills, and neither paper contains the "70% forgotten in 24 hours" line. LinkedIn found organizations most often measuring career-development impact through engagement at 72% and retention at 64%, and Training magazine found increasing program effectiveness the top 2026 resource priority at 28%. Our employee development plan template covers how to set measurable outcomes.

Figures to stop using

• "94% of employees would stay longer if the company invested in their learning." LinkedIn's 2018 Workplace Learning Report, from about 4,000 professionals surveyed worldwide in 2017. It is not in the 2025 report, and the question wording was never published. Use Gallup's 61% and 48% or LinkedIn's 88% of organizations instead.
• "Companies with comprehensive training have 218% higher income per employee." An American Society for Training and Development study from 2000 comparing publicly traded firms on mid-1990s data. Misattributed to Forbes, ATD research and LinkedIn.
• "70% of what is learned is forgotten within 24 hours." In neither Ebbinghaus nor its replication. The one-day savings figure is 34% in the original.
• "Trained employees are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive." Gallup's engagement meta-analysis figures, now 23% and 18%, about engaged business units, not training.
• "Strong learning cultures are 92% more likely to innovate (Deloitte)." A 2010 Bersin and Associates report.
• "40% of poorly trained employees leave within a year." No methodology exists; it traces to a 2012 Canadian tourism HR article.
• "$98 billion" against "$102.8 billion." Both are Training magazine figures, for 2024 and 2025. Attach the year.
• ATD per-employee figures without edition. $1,207, $1,280, $1,220, $1,283 and $1,254 are five different years. Use $1,254 for 2024 data.

Key takeaways

• US organizations with 100 or more employees spent $102.8 billion on training in 2025, up 4.9%, or $874 per learner for about 40 hours a year. Small organizations spend $1,091 per learner and large ones $468.
• ATD's narrower measure puts direct learning spend at $1,254 per employee and formal hours used at 13.7, at a cost of $165 per hour.
• 34% of training hours are online, 28% classroom, 24% virtual classroom and 22% blended. AI-delivered training is 2%.
• 61% of US workers say an upskilling opportunity is extremely or very important to staying in their job and 48% would switch employers for one, across 15,066 workers. Only 30% strongly agree someone encourages their development.
• Employers expect 39% of existing skills to be transformed or outdated by 2030 and 59 of every 100 workers to need training. 63% call skills gaps their biggest barrier.
• 40% of US employees use AI at work but AI-delivered training is 2% of hours and only 22% say their employer has a clear AI plan.
• Only 15% of employees say their manager helped them build a career plan in the past six months. Manager training is the area most expected to receive more funding in 2026.
• Training has medium-to-large effects on learning, behavior and results, at about 0.62, across 397 effect sizes. The '94% would stay' figure is a 2018 global survey with unpublished wording.