The 2004 Industry Report

If you glance over the charts in this year's Industry Report, you might be tempted to say to yourself, "Same deal, different year." The overall amount spent on training hasn't changed much; $51.4 billion this year, $51.3 billion last year. Instructor-led classroom training continues to be the dominant method of delivery; 70 percent of training was delivered this way, compared to 69 percent last year. Ho-hum.
But there's a glimmer of change on the horizon, starting with reported changes in training budgets. Twenty-six percent of respondents reported larger training budgets this year, compared to 22 percent last year, and while 28 percent reported smaller budgets last year, only 15 percent did so this year.
Other shifts indicate some changes underway in the industry. Take outsourcing, for example, both in the design and delivery of training. For both technology-based and traditional training, the amount of training delivered by outside contractors rose by two percentage points, and the amount of training designed by outside contractors rose by three—to 41 percent.
IT's role in training seems to be changing, too. After hovering around 20 percent for the last three years, only 13 percent of respondents said that any full-time trainers at their organization drew their salaries from the IT budget rather than the training/HR budget. And only 8 percent of respondents reported that IT controlled traditional training purchases, compared to 15 percent last year.
We could go on, but that's what the charts are for. As you read, keep in mind that the report details the formal training activity of U.S. organizations with 100 or more employees. As in the past, we drew on a random sample of Training subscribers to gather our data, beginning with phone interviews to make sure each potential respondent was the best-qualified person to answer our questions about training. Qualified respondents were then directed to a secure Web site to complete our questionnaire. The response rate was 38 percent (1,222 usable respondents from a pool of 3,180 qualified respondents), with a precision estimate of plus or minus 2.8 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
We believe our industry report is the best barometer of employer-sponsored training in the United States—the skills taught, the methods employed and the dollars spent. Our paying subscribers can get still more industry data—more than 50 additional tables and a PDF of this executive summary—at www.trainingmag.com/ustis.
Holly Dolezalek is the associate editor of Training. edit@trainingmag.com