The Training Industry Experiences Both Ups and Downs

The average learning hours per employee decreased to 13.7 in 2024, noted Rocki Basel, the Association for Talent Development’s director of research, and Bianca Woods, a content manager at ATD, in a session on Sunday morning. However, they continued, the percentage of total revenue organizations have invested in learning has increased from 2 percent in 2020 to 2.9 percent in 2024.

The session, which discussed the 2025 State of the Industry report, explains that the 13.7 hours represent formal learning hours, not on-the-job learning. Therefore, that number, which was 35 hours per employee in 2020, does not include activities such as coaching and mentoring.

Basel offered a few more ideas as to why hours per employee have decreased during the last five years.

“In 2020 and 2021, we were in the middle of a pandemic, and people were doing all kinds of training. Then we came out of the pandemic, and that changed,” she said. “Another thing we’ve been seeing is on-the-job training has continued to increase over these years. We weren’t seeing that as often five or 10 years ago.”

Basel believes formal learning hours will level off, and cautions that the statistic will not dip below 10 hours per year.

In positive news, the report shows the cost per learning hour organizations use has steadily increased since 2020. The jump from 2023 to 2024 was especially drastic, rising from $123 to $165.

Artificial intelligence is the fastest-growing training topic in 2024, with 62 percent of respondents saying they expect their organization to increase the AI skills training it offers to existing employees.

Most TD teams measure impact via employee satisfaction, employee retention, and productivity improvement.

“It’s important to be thinking about how you can actually measure impact instead of just measuring the number of people who are taking a training,” Basel explained.

Regarding the report itself, Basel revealed that ATD took feedback into account, gathering survey answers in January of this year and publishing the report just before ATD25. In previous years, the research team collected answers in July for the previous year and published the report in December, which meant the data was already one year old when ATD released it.

Other improvements to the report include a section in the appendix that organizes data by organization size and industry. The 2025 report data represents 539 respondents.

The report is a free ATD member benefit. ATD25 attendees can participate in the survey next year by granting ATD permission to send them questions through their member profile on ATD’s website. Navigate to your profile picture at the top right of the website, click My Account in the dropdown, then select Communication Preferences on the right. Check the box for Research Surveys underneath Opportunities and Offers.

You can find printed copies of the 2025 State of the Industry report at ATD Central on the EXPO floor or purchase copies at the ATD Store or online.

Read more about ATD25 at conferencedaily.td.org.