We just finished reading the 32-page ASTD 2010 State of the Industry Report (which is based on 2009 numbers, btw), issued in November, by ASTD.  Here are some of the things we found interesting:

• Although organizations made many changes in the past year to adapt to the economic environment, they continued to support learning and development for their employees at levels equal to or greater than in past years. <Hooray!>

• The average annual expenditure on training, per employee, was $1,081 which is an increase from the year prior, but which is attributable to smaller workforces.  Tuition reimbursement continues to be the smallest budget proportion of training budgets <why? it's the least labor intensive and it's reimbursable by the federal government! why don't more companies use tuition reimbursement? We don't get it>.

• The ratio of "learning staff" to number of employees is 1:240

• Employees enjoy an average of 31.9 hours of formal training per year and the cost of a learning hour is $63.00 (up from $52 the previous year)

• The 3 topics in which people are most frequently trained: Professional / industry specific, knowledge / skills, Managerial / supervisory, IT and systems

• 27.7% of all formal learning hours are available via online delivery.

• Training, as a percent of payroll, is 2.14% Training, as a percent of profit, is 10.88% Training budgets spent on external resources: 26.88%

• Outsourcing increased to 26.9% of total training budgets (first increase in 4 years)

• 68% of training is still delivered via instructor (includes classroom, virtual classroom, moderated, etc)

• Self-paced, online learning accounts for 22% of learning that is delivered"

• Everybody" does Level 1 evaluations and "nobody" thinks they are very effective - 92% of respondents reported they conduct level 1 evaluations while 36% think they are effective.

In our opinion -Things sound rosy!