Employees spent more time in formal learning in 2025 while organizations spent less per person on it, according to the Association for Talent Development's 2026 State of the Industry report. ATD released the annual corporate training & L&D benchmark in May 2026. For L&D leads building 2027 budgets, and for faculty and credential providers who sell into corporate learning, it gives a current read on hours, dollars, staffing and the content employers are buying.

The full title is 2026 State of the Industry: Talent Development Benchmarks and Trends, and it covers data from calendar year 2025. ATD Research collected data from 340 organizations across a range of industries and sizes. The report was sponsored by Chronus and Zensai. ATD announced it in a press release dated May 13, 2026, from its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and its ATD26 conference news site also summarized the findings. The full report breaks results out by organization size and industry; it is free to ATD members and sold to nonmembers.

Hours up, dollars down

The two headline numbers moved in opposite directions:

  • Formal learning hours: 16.7 hours per employee in 2025, up from 13.7 hours in 2024. ATD says this is the first increase in formal learning hours in five years.
  • Direct learning expenditure: $846 per employee in 2025, down $408 from $1,254 in 2024.

ATD's researchers offered several possible explanations for the lower spending: more use of virtual instructor-led classrooms, which cut instructor travel; reductions in talent development headcount, which lowered salary costs; and efficiency gains from automating administrative work. The organizations in the sample reported using live instructor-led classrooms, virtual classrooms, job aids and coaching to deliver content.

Staffing and influence inside the organization

The press release lists several structural findings about the talent development (TD) function:

  • The average TD staff across all participating organizations was 42 people in 2025, and 24 percent of organizations increased TD headcount during the year.
  • Thirty-nine percent of organizations have a dedicated TD, learning or training department.
  • Fifty-five percent of TD functions are represented on their organization's senior leadership team, down from 75 percent in 2024.
  • ATD's TD Executive Confidence Index stood at 63.1, a decline of 4.1 points from 2024.

What the outlook looks like

Respondents were generally optimistic about the function's ability to meet organizational needs, its effect on corporate performance and how the TD department is perceived over the next six months. Money was the exception. In 2025, 28 percent expected financial resources for learning to increase over the coming six months and 25 percent expected a decrease. A year earlier, 48 percent expected an increase and 8 percent a decrease. Forty-seven percent expected the TD budget to stay the same.

Asked to name their top three challenges, 46 percent of respondents cited prioritizing multiple demands, 33 percent cited scaling with few resources, and 27 percent each cited the pace of change and inadequate budget or resources.

What employers are training on, and what they measure

Content mix varied by organization size and industry, but the most common types of training reported were:

  • Managerial and supervisory training: 88 percent of organizations
  • Communication skills: 78 percent
  • Teamwork: 73 percent
  • Customer service: 63 percent

On artificial intelligence, more organizations offered practical AI skills training (55 percent) than technical AI skills training (45 percent).

Respondents said their priorities going forward are closing employee skills gaps and aligning learning goals with organizational goals. Yet fewer than a quarter currently measure whether their training programs achieve organizational goals, and a smaller share measure return on investment, according to ATD's summary. ATD's researchers note that economic volatility during 2025 may add pressure on TD functions to document their value.

How to use the benchmarks

ATD recommends that organizations track State of the Industry trends over several years and compare themselves against peers of similar size and industry, rather than trying to match the all-organization averages. For corporate training & L&D teams, that means pulling the industry and size breakouts in the full report before setting a per-employee budget target. For universities and certification bodies that design workforce programs with employer partners, the content data shows where corporate demand is concentrated: management, communication and teamwork, with practical AI skills now offered by a majority of the organizations surveyed. ATD also hosted webinars on the findings on June 11 and July 16, 2026.

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