OVERVIEW
Several organizations within the training industry estimate the size of the market by comparing internal research to economic data. TrainingIndustry.com uses data from multiple expert sources, along with data collected from our segment analyses derived from annual Top Training Company studies. Training Industry’s estimates of the global spend compared to the North American spend is below. Note that data related to spend includes all dollars spent by companies for training activities, including insourced and outsourced spend.
This data does not include expenditures related to consumers’ spend for training programs (individuals taking training courses for personal or non-work related development); revenues of educational institutions (universities and for-profit educational companies) or revenues of community colleges from students paying tuition. It does include dollars paid by corporations to educational institutions for corporate training initiatives.
| Global Spend (USD) | North America (USD) | Rest of World (USD) | |
| 2025* | $403.2B | $188.6B | $214.6B |
| 2024 | $397.1B | $184.9B | $212.2B |
| 2022 | $385.1B | $177.8B | $207.3B |
| 2020* | $357.7B | $165.3B | $192.4B |
| 2015 | $355.6B | $160.0B | $195.6B |
| 2010 | $271.1B | $122.0B | $149.1B |
| *estimated |
SOURCING BREAKDOWN
In 2024, Training Industry estimates that companies spent an average of 29% of their training budget on external (outsourced) suppliers and approximately 61% on internal resources.
Of the outsourced spend in 2024, training BPO (business process outsourcing) deals comprise an estimated 10% of the market. The training BPO market consists of comprehensive and selective outsourcing engagements, of which selective outsourcing engagements are growing the fastest.
For more information about market sizing, contact editor@trainingindustry.com, or check out our report, The State of the Corporate Training Market.
SOURCES
- Training Industry research
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
- International Monetary Fund
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