Learning and Development Statistics 2026

How to read this page: every figure names its source and year. Survey results, official statistics, vendor claims and figures from our own directory are labeled separately, because they are not equally reliable.

How many adults take part in learning and training?

Eurostat measures participation in two ways, and the two series should not be read as a trend line.

1. In the 2022 Adult Education Survey, 46.6% of EU adults aged 25 to 64 had taken part in education or training in the previous 12 months.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2022Official statistics
2. Participation in the 2022 survey was 47.2% for women and 46.0% for men across the EU.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2022Official statistics
3. Sweden and the Netherlands were above 65% on 12-month adult learning participation in 2022, while Poland, Bulgaria and Greece were below 25%.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2022Official statistics
4. The EU Labour Force Survey measured 12-month participation at 28.5% for adults aged 25 to 64 in 2024, a lower figure because its method differs from the Adult Education Survey.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2024Official statistics
5. Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and Finland were above 50% on the 2024 Labour Force Survey measure, while Bulgaria and Greece were below 9%.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2024Official statistics
6. In the four weeks before the survey, 10.8% of EU adults aged 25 to 64 had taken part in learning in 2019, falling to 9.1% in 2020 at the start of COVID-19.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2020Official statistics
7. In 2025, 14.9% of women and 12.4% of men aged 25 to 64 in the EU had taken part in learning in the previous four weeks.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2025Official statistics
8. Eurostat's EU targets call for at least 47% of adults to take part in learning each year by 2025 and at least 60% of all adults each year by 2030.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2025Official statistics

How much of that learning is informal or for the unemployed?

1. In 2022, 64.2% of EU adults aged 25 to 64 reported informal learning, with a national range from below 30% in Greece to above 90% in Cyprus.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2022Official statistics
2. In 14 EU countries, more than half of informal learners said all of their informal learning activities were for leisure rather than for work.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2022Official statistics
3. In 2025, 15.9% of unemployed EU adults had a recent learning experience, up from 9.3% in 2015 but below the 20% target.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2025Official statistics
4. Only eight EU countries met the 20% target for learning among the unemployed in 2025: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia, Ireland and Slovenia.Source: Eurostat, Adult learning statistics, 2025Official statistics

What do L&D teams prioritize?

LinkedIn's report surveyed 937 L&D and HR professionals and 679 learners, with platform data as of September 2024.

1. 49% of L&D and talent development professionals agreed that their executives are concerned employees lack the right skills to execute business strategy.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
2. 91% of L&D professionals agreed that continuous learning is more important than ever for career success.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
3. 71% of L&D professionals said they are exploring, experimenting with or integrating AI into their work.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
4. 88% of organizations were concerned about employee retention, and providing learning opportunities was the top retention strategy named.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
5. 71% of organizations offered leadership training, the most common career development practice in the report.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
6. Business strategy was the skill most at risk of net depletion from employee turnover, ahead of strategic planning, sales management and project planning.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey

How mature are career development programs?

1. 36% of organizations qualified as career development champions with robust programs, 31% had programs with limited adoption, and 33% had no initiatives or were just getting started.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
2. 84% of employees agreed that learning adds purpose to their work.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
3. Only 15% of employees said their manager helped them build a career plan in the previous six months, down 5 percentage points from 2024.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
4. 50% of respondents said managers lack the support they need for career development, 45% said employees lack support and 33% said talent teams lack support.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
5. Only 11% named "leadership doesn't value career development" as a top-three barrier.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
6. Career development champions were 88% more likely than other organizations to offer career-enhancing gig or project-based learning.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
7. 55% of champions and 48% of other organizations saw internal mobility as a higher priority for the coming year.Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 2025Survey
8. 63% of U.S. workers who quit a job in 2021 cited no opportunities for advancement as a reason, and at least a third called it a major reason.Source: Pew Research Center, Majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cite low pay, no opportunities for advancement (2022), 2022Survey

How are workers being trained for AI?

AI training is the fastest-moving topic in workplace learning, and the sources below cover different populations and years.

1. Only 39% of people who use AI at work globally had received AI training from their company, in a survey of 31,000 knowledge workers in 31 markets fielded in February and March 2024.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024Survey
2. 76% of professionals said they need AI skills to remain competitive in the job market.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024Survey
3. 66% of business leaders said they would not hire someone without AI skills, and 71% would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced one without.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024Survey
4. LinkedIn data cited by the Work Trend Index showed use of AI-focused LinkedIn Learning courses by non-technical professionals rising 160% over the previous six months.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024
5. LinkedIn's Economic Graph projected that skills for a given job will change 50% by 2030 compared with 2016, and 68% once generative AI is included.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024
6. In SHRM's January 2025 survey of 1,812 U.S. workers, about 45% said they used AI in their jobs, and 51% named enhanced training as the top priority for improving AI outcomes.Source: SHRM, press release on the skills gap and AI adoption (July 2025), 2025Survey
7. Among U.S. workers who rated their organization's AI and human integration as excellent, 97% were satisfied with training opportunities, against 21% among those who rated it fair and 18% among those who rated it poor.Source: SHRM, press release on the skills gap and AI adoption (July 2025), 2025Survey
8. In Gallup's February 2026 survey of 23,717 U.S. employees, 50% used AI in their role at least a few times a year, and 13% used it daily.Source: Gallup, Rising AI Adoption Spotlights Workforce Changes (2026), 2026Survey
9. 41% of U.S. employees in Gallup's February 2026 survey said their organization had integrated AI tools or technology, up 3 points from the previous quarter.Source: Gallup, Rising AI Adoption Spotlights Workforce Changes (2026), 2026Survey

What do companies and workers say about AI and skills investment?

1. Power users of AI were 37% more likely than other respondents to say their company has a virtual learning program and 37% more likely to have received training on prompt writing.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024Survey
2. 45% of U.S. executives said they were not investing in AI tools or products for employees, according to a LinkedIn Executive Confidence Index survey of VP-level leaders and above in March 2024.Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (2024), 2024Survey
3. 62% of respondents in Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends study rated orchestrating new technologies as critically important, but only 28% were doing something meaningful about it.Source: Deloitte, 2025 Global Human Capital Trends, 2025Survey
4. In EU enterprises with 10 or more employees, 20.0% used AI technologies in 2025, up from 13.5% in 2024 and 8.1% in 2023.Source: Eurostat, Use of artificial intelligence in enterprises (2025), 2025Official statistics
5. Denmark (42.0%), Finland (37.8%) and Sweden (35.0%) had the highest shares of enterprises using AI in 2025, while Romania (5.2%), Poland (8.4%) and Bulgaria (8.5%) had the lowest.Source: Eurostat, Use of artificial intelligence in enterprises (2025), 2025Official statistics
6. In Gallup's February 2026 survey, 18% of U.S. employees said their job was very or somewhat likely to be eliminated within five years because of AI or automation, rising to 23% at organizations that had adopted AI.Source: Gallup, Rising AI Adoption Spotlights Workforce Changes (2026), 2026Survey

Methodology

We opened every source page ourselves and kept only figures that appear on those pages. Sources are Eurostat, LinkedIn Learning's 2025 Workplace Learning Report, SHRM, Gallup, Pew Research Center, Deloitte and the Microsoft Work Trend Index. Each fact gives the data year, or the publication year when fieldwork dates are not stated, and is labeled survey, official, platform-data or projection.

We dropped figures we had seen only in search snippets or on pages that blocked access.

Limits: Eurostat's two participation series use different methods and cannot be compared as a trend. LinkedIn's report draws on L&D professionals and LinkedIn's own members and platform data, so it skews toward organizations that invest in learning. SHRM, Gallup and Pew figures describe U.S. respondents, and SHRM states its data is unweighted.

Work Trend Index figures date from 2024 and AI training moves quickly. We found no published figure for average training spend per employee that we could open, so this page does not give one. For related data see employee engagement statistics and HR technology statistics.

Our approach is described on the editorial process page.

Frequently asked questions

How many adults in Europe take part in learning each year?

Eurostat's 2022 Adult Education Survey found that 46.6% of EU adults aged 25 to 64 took part in education or training in the previous 12 months. The EU Labour Force Survey gave a lower 28.5% for 2024 because its method differs, so the two should not be read as a trend. Sweden and the Netherlands were above 65% in 2022.

What is the top retention strategy for L&D leaders?

In LinkedIn Learning's 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 88% of organizations were concerned about employee retention, and providing learning opportunities was the top retention strategy named. The report also found only 15% of employees said their manager helped them build a career plan in the previous six months.

How many workers have received AI training from their employer?

The Work Trend Index found that 39% of people using AI at work globally had received AI training from their company, in a survey of 31,000 knowledge workers fielded in early 2024. In SHRM's January 2025 U.S. survey, 51% of workers named enhanced training as the top priority for improving AI outcomes.

Do people leave jobs over a lack of advancement?

Pew Research Center found that 63% of U.S. workers who quit a job in 2021 cited no opportunities for advancement as a reason, and at least a third called it a major reason. The survey fielded in February 2022 covered 965 workers who left a job by choice.

Where can I compare learning management systems?

Our learning management systems category compares vendors on setup, real price, data export, independence and fit. Statistics on this page inform the questions to ask, but they are not a ranking of any product.