After two years of significant budget and staffing cuts within U.S. L&D organizations, we're seeing signs of a turnaround. Training budgets, which dropped 21% between 2007 and 2009, began to stabilize, and many L&D organizations started to hire again in 2010.
Overall, L&D staffing increased 6% between 2009 and 2010. This helped to bump up training spending, which includes staff payroll, to an increase of 2% during the period.
But the story is mixed for different segments. Spending within small and midsize businesses increased from 1% to 3%. Large businesses fared better than in 2009, when their budgets were cut by 12%. But these large enterprises have not been as quick to revive, as their spending dropped another 1%, on average, in 2010.
Certain industries also fared better than others. The technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and retail sectors had net increases in L&D spending of 4% or more. The banking/financial services and government sectors, on the other hand, continued to cut their L&D programs, with spending down 4% to 7%.
Get all of the latest numbers from our annual report, "The Corporate Learning Factbook 2011" plus examples of how L&D organizations are changing their roles and programs to deliver results.