Anyone setting a training budget eventually asks what everyone else spends. The answers in circulation come from vendor surveys with self-selected samples, and they vary by a factor of five. There is a better source, and almost nobody uses it.
Every five years, the statistical offices of the European Union survey employers about what they spent on continuing vocational training, how many staff took part, and how many hours those staff spent in a room. It is called the Continuing Vocational Training Survey, it covers every enterprise with ten or more employees, and it has run in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. The results sit in the Eurostat database in tables that nobody quotes.
They show something that no vendor survey has reported: the amount spent on the average trained employee has been falling for fifteen years.
1,886 euro in 2005, 1,433 euro in 2020
The headline figure in the survey is the cost of a course per participant, covering direct costs, the wage bill of the time participants spend away from work, and net contributions to training funds. In the EU-27 it came to 1,433 euro in 2020 and 1,488 euro in 2005.
Nominally, then, spending per trained person went sideways for fifteen years while everything else got more expensive. Deflating with the harmonised consumer price index turns that into the real picture.
| Survey year | Per participant, nominal | In 2020 euro |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 1,488 € | 1,886 € |
| 2010 | 1,476 € | 1,678 € |
| 2015 | 1,484 € | 1,569 € |
| 2020 | 1,433 € | 1,433 € |
That is a fall of 24 percent in real terms. The obvious objection is the pandemic, and it does not survive the data: by 2015, five years before anyone had heard of COVID-19, the figure was already down 17 percent on 2005. The 2020 round adds another nine points to a decline that was well under way.
Germany follows the same path from a higher base. German employers spent 1,735 euro per participant in 2005, worth 2,199 euro in 2020 money, and 1,854 euro in 2020. A real fall of 16 percent.
The budget did not shrink. The queue got longer
The interesting part is what did not fall.
Measured per person employed rather than per person trained, EU spending went from 496 euro in 2005 to 615 euro in 2020. In 2020 money the 2005 figure was 629 euro, so the total training budget per head of workforce has been almost exactly flat in real terms for fifteen years.
What changed is how many people that budget has to cover. The share of employees who attended a training course rose from 32.9 percent in 2005 to 42.4 percent in 2020.
| Survey year | Spend per employee, in 2020 euro | Share of employees trained |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 629 € | 32.9 % |
| 2010 | 678 € | 38.9 % |
| 2015 | 681 € | 42.9 % |
| 2020 | 615 € | 42.4 % |
Roughly ten points more of the workforce now goes through training on a budget that has not grown. Arithmetic does the rest. This is the mechanism behind a complaint heard in every learning function: the programmes keep getting shorter and lighter, and nobody can point to a budget cut that explains it.
About 22 hours per trained person, down from 28
The hours confirm it, and they can be derived two independent ways.
Eurostat reports hours spent in training per person employed: 9.3 in 2005, 9.5 in 2020, essentially flat. Divided by the participation rate, that gives hours per participant of 28.3 in 2005 and 22.4 in 2020.
The second route uses money. Eurostat also publishes cost per training hour, 52 euro in 2005 and 64 euro in 2020. Dividing cost per participant by cost per hour gives 28.6 hours in 2005 and 22.4 hours in 2020. Two different tables, the same answer to within a rounding step: the average trained employee lost roughly a fifth of their training time.
The cost per hour is worth a second look on its own. At 52 euro in 2005 and 64 euro in 2020, it rose by 23 percent nominally, which after inflation is flat. An hour of training did not get cheaper. Organisations simply buy fewer hours each for more people.
Moderator analyses support the use of needs analysis, feedback, multiple delivery methods (especially practice), spaced training sessions, a location that is on-site, and face-to-face delivery that is not self-administered.
The relevance of that list to a shrinking hour budget is direct. Practice takes time. Spacing sessions across weeks takes time. Both are among the design choices with the best evidence behind them, and both are the first things to go when the hours per head fall. We look at the rest of that evidence in what leadership training actually changes.
The 0.7 percent that is really 1.5 percent
One number from this survey does circulate widely, and it is misquoted almost every time.
Training spending is often given as 0.7 percent of total labour cost. That is the figure for direct costs only: fees, external trainers, materials, travel. Eurostat also publishes the total, which adds the wage cost of the hours participants spend in training rather than at work. For the EU-27 in 2020 that total is 1.5 percent.
| Component, EU-27, 2020 | Share of total labour cost |
|---|---|
| Direct costs | 0.5 % |
| Labour cost of participants | 0.8 % |
| Net contributions to training funds | 0.1 % |
| Total | 1.5 % |
Two things follow. The first is that anyone benchmarking against 0.7 percent is comparing their full budget to somebody else's invoice line, and will conclude they are overspending by roughly half. The second is that the direct-cost figure has itself fallen: 0.7 percent in 2005 and 2015, 0.5 percent in 2020, a relative drop of about 29 percent.
More than half of what training costs an employer is paid time. That is the part a finance director can cut without cancelling anything, and it is the part that falls when a two-day workshop becomes a ninety-minute webinar.
What a sensible benchmark looks like
The survey supports a few defensible reference points for 2020, the most recent round.
- Per trained person: 1,433 euro across the EU-27. The national spread is wide. Ireland is highest at 2,315 purchasing power standards, Czechia lowest at 320.
- Per employee on the payroll: 615 euro, or about 1.5 percent of total labour cost including paid time.
- Coverage: 42.4 percent of employees attended at least one course. 67.4 percent of enterprises with ten or more staff provided any training at all, ranging from 17.5 percent in Romania to 96.8 percent in Latvia.
- Hours: about 22 per participant, 9.5 per employee on the payroll.
These are averages across every sector and every kind of course, from forklift certification to executive programmes, so they are a floor for a leadership budget rather than a target. What they are good for is the direction of travel, and for a conversation that most learning functions have never had with their finance department: the money has not gone away, it has been spread thinner, and the thinning has been going on since 2005.
Company size changes all of these figures substantially, and that comparison is in what firms of different sizes spend.
A note on the data
The survey is voluntary for enterprises in some member states and the response burden is heavy, so the national figures carry different reliability. Eurostat flags several country values as low reliability, and a few countries are missing entire waves; Ireland has no 2010 figure and the United Kingdom leaves the series after 2015.
The 2020 round is also the most recent. Fieldwork covers the 2020 calendar year, which for most of Europe was the first pandemic year, and classroom training in particular was disrupted. That is a real distortion and it is one reason the 2015 comparison matters more than the 2020 one for anything except the most current level. The next round covers 2025 and is not yet published.
Common questions
How much should we budget per employee for training? The EU-27 average in 2020 was 615 euro per person employed, or about 1.5 percent of total labour cost when the paid time of participants is included. Large enterprises with 250 or more staff spent 859 euro, small firms with 10 to 49 staff spent 342 euro.
Is 0.7 percent of payroll a good benchmark for training spend? Only if you mean direct costs. Eurostat's 0.7 percent covers fees, external providers and materials, not the wage cost of the time employees spend in training. The total is 1.5 percent of labour cost, and more than half of that is paid time.
Has training spending actually been cut? Not in total. EU spending per person employed has been flat in real terms since 2005. What has fallen is spending per trained person, by about 24 percent, because employers now train roughly ten percentage points more of their workforce with the same real money.
How many hours of training does an average employee get? In the EU in 2020, 9.5 hours per person employed across the year, and about 22 hours for each person who attended at least one course. In 2005 the figure per participant was about 28 hours.
Which countries spend the most on training? Per participant in purchasing power standards in 2020, Ireland leads at 2,315 and Czechia is lowest at 320. Measured per training hour, France is highest at 91 euro and Romania lowest at 14 euro.
Why is the most recent data from 2020? The Continuing Vocational Training Survey runs every five years. The 2020 round is the sixth and the most recent published. Data for 2025 has been collected but is not yet released, which is normal: a survey of this size takes about two years from fieldwork to publication.
Does this include leadership development specifically? No. The survey covers all continuing vocational training courses, which means everything from compliance refreshers to language classes. Leadership programmes are a small and comparatively expensive slice of it, so these figures are a floor rather than a benchmark for management development budgets.
Sources
- Eurostat, Cost of CVT courses by type and size class, per participant (trng_cvt_19s)
- Eurostat, Cost of CVT courses per person employed in all enterprises (trng_cvt_17s)
- Eurostat, Participants in CVT courses as a percentage of persons employed (trng_cvt_12s)
- Eurostat, Cost of CVT courses as a percentage of total labour cost (trng_cvt_16s)
- Eurostat, Hours spent in CVT courses per person employed (trng_cvt_23s)
- Eurostat, Harmonised index of consumer prices, annual average index (prc_hicp_aind)
- Eurostat, Statistics on continuing vocational training in enterprises
