Hours of training per employee by company size U.S. 2017-2019

Smaller companies in the U.S. have been increasing their investment in staff training over the last three years, with the average number of training hours provided annually per employee increasing from 43.2 in 2017 to 49.8 in 2019. This was the highest average of all business sizes in that year, with midsize companies providing an annual average of 33.9 hours and large companies 38.8 hours per employee.

The training industry in the U.S.

Workplace training is the process of educating staff in the specific skills they need to perform the tasks required for their role. This can be developed and provided by in-house staff or by third-party training providers. Companies generally prefer to retain a high level of in-house control though, with fully outsourced solutions for most training services being rare and unlikely to increase in the future. This means the majority of expenditure within the industry is directed to the payment of wages for in-house staff.

Training methods and expenditure

The recent increase in training hours provided by smaller companies also translates in increased expenditure per employee. Moreover, spending per employee decreases in line with company size. This trend likely reflects the greater capacity that larger companies have to invest in large scale and/or technological training solutions able to serve a large number of employees simultaneously. For example, technological solutions such as online learning tools, once implemented, can provide training for a small or large number of employees at a similar overall cost. This hypothesis seems to be reflected in how large organizations make more use of virtual classrooms and less use of instructor-led classrooms as the sole method of training than small and midsize organizations.