Workforce training takes many forms, from formal study and short safety courses to learning by doing on the job. The latest available figures show wide differences in participation, delivery, duration, and access across countries and worker groups.
Contents
- Global participation in job-related learning
- Formal and non-formal training
- Subjects, credentials, and course length
- How workforce training is delivered
- Informal learning on the job
- U.S. training across age and education groups
- EU participation by citizenship
Global participation in job-related learning
Across participating OECD countries, two in five adults participated in job-related adult learning during the 12 months before the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. The OECD figures cover formal and non-formal learning among adults ages 25–65, and the OECD average is unweighted across participating countries. OECD, Where, what and how are adults learning?
Participation varied substantially between countries in the 2023 survey:
- Norway recorded a 58% job-related adult-learning participation rate.
- The United States recorded 55%.
- Denmark recorded 54%.
- New Zealand recorded 53%.
- Poland recorded 21%.
- Croatia recorded 20%.
- Korea recorded 13%.
These percentages describe participation during the survey’s reference period, rather than the share of workers trained in one particular calendar year. They also measure adult learning broadly, so they should not be read as a count of employer-provided courses alone.
Formal and non-formal training
The OECD-average participation rate was 8% for formal job-related learning and 37% for non-formal job-related learning in 2023. Four percent of adults participated in both types. Looking at mutually exclusive groups, 32% participated in non-formal learning only and 4% in formal learning only. OECD, Where, what and how are adults learning?
Formal learning generally refers to structured education leading through an organized program, while non-formal learning includes organized learning activities outside that formal structure. The figures indicate that short, job-related activities are much more common than formal study for adults in the participating OECD countries.
Among formal adult-learning activities, tertiary-level study accounted for 65% on average across OECD countries in 2023. The national pattern was not uniform: tertiary-level study represented 90% of formal adult learning in both Italy and Czechia, but less than 40% in Canada. OECD, Where, what and how are adults learning?
| Measure | OECD figure | Reference period |
|---|---|---|
| Formal job-related learning | 8% | 2023 survey |
| Non-formal job-related learning | 37% | 2023 survey |
| Both formal and non-formal learning | 4% | 2023 survey |
| Non-formal learning only | 32% | 2023 survey |
| Formal learning only | 4% | 2023 survey |
The categories use different reporting views, so the “both,” “non-formal only,” and “formal only” figures are best used to understand overlap rather than added to the overall participation rate without accounting for that structure.
Subjects, credentials, and course length
Health and safety was the primary focus of 18% of non-formal job-related learning activities across OECD countries in 2023. IT and digital skills followed at 14%. Around 1% of activities focused primarily on literacy and numeracy skills. OECD, Where, what and how are adults learning?
An OECD-average 62% of non-formal learning activities led to a certificate. That figure describes the share of activities resulting in a certificate; it does not establish that every participant earned a formal qualification or that certificates were equivalent across countries.
Course length was concentrated at the shorter end of the range:
- 42% of non-formal job-related learning activities lasted one day or less.
- 40% lasted between one day and one week.
- 15% lasted between one week and one month.
- 4% lasted longer than one month.
The published percentages are rounded and describe activity duration, not the number of hours of instruction. A one-day activity and a multi-day activity may therefore differ considerably in intensity even when both fall into the shorter-duration groups.
How workforce training is delivered
Face-to-face instruction accounted for 53% of non-formal learning across OECD countries in 2023. Online learning accounted for 34%, and blended learning for 14%. OECD, Where, what and how are adults learning?
The country mix behind those averages was wide. More than 60% of non-formal learning took place at a distance in Canada, Chile, England, Latvia, and the United States. By contrast, more than two-thirds remained face-to-face in Czechia, Denmark, France, and the Slovak Republic.
These delivery figures are useful when interpreting access to training. A distance-learning majority in one country does not mean that all learning was online, because the distance grouping can include more than one remote format. Likewise, a face-to-face majority does not indicate that online or blended options were absent. The OECD results describe the mix of non-formal learning activities reported in each participating country during the 2023 survey period.
Scheduling also favored concentrated instruction. Three in five non-formal learning activities followed blocked sessions across OECD countries. Recurring sessions spread over several weeks or months accounted for 35% of activities. Asynchronous learning represented less than 5% on average. These measures describe the organization of activities, so they should not be treated as estimates of total learner time.
Informal learning on the job
Structured courses are only one part of workforce development. More than 90% of employed adults across OECD countries reported learning new things at work at least occasionally in 2023. The reported frequency was distributed across several levels: 22% learned new things daily, 23% weekly, 23% monthly, and 24% less than once a month. OECD, Where, what and how are adults learning?
Learning by doing was reported daily by 28% of employees across OECD countries. Lithuania provides a contrasting country statistic: 28% of employees there reported that they never learned by doing at work in 2023. The two measures use different response categories and should not be compared as direct opposites.
Keeping up with new products and services was another reported activity. Daily participation reached 20% of employees across OECD countries in 2023. Together, these figures show why a training policy focused only on courses can miss a large share of how employees acquire workplace knowledge.
U.S. training across age and education groups
U.S. longitudinal figures from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cover individuals observed across different windows from 1998 through 2023. They are not single-year prevalence estimates. The age bands and observation windows differ, so the percentages should be read as longitudinal results for the labeled groups. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 6
Among U.S. individuals ages 18 to 38 observed from 1998 through 2023, 65.4% received any training. Within that group, 29.1% received employer training, 26.5% received vocational, technical, or trade training, and 3.6% received apprenticeship training.
The share receiving any training differed across the labeled age windows:
- Ages 18 to 23, observed from 1998 through 2008: 38.6%.
- Ages 24 to 29, observed from 2004 through 2014: 38.0%.
- Ages 30 to 38, observed from 2010 through 2023: 27.2%.
Across the full 18-to-38 group observed from 1998 through 2023, 65.6% of men and 65.3% of women received any training. Among individuals with less than a high school diploma, 44.0% received any training during the same broad 1998–2023 observation period. These are subgroup percentages from the longitudinal survey, not evidence that sex or educational attainment alone caused the difference.
EU participation by citizenship
Eurostat reported participation in formal or non-formal education and training during the previous 12 months for EU residents ages 25–64 in its 2024 figures. EU nationals had a participation rate of 29.2%. Non-EU citizens had a rate of 22.4%, while citizens of other EU countries also had a rate of 22.4%. Eurostat, Migrant integration statistics — education
The citizenship comparison is a different population and measure from the OECD job-related learning statistics: it covers formal or non-formal education and training for EU residents, rather than the OECD’s job-related formal and non-formal learning among adults ages 25–65. The two sets of figures can therefore provide context, but they should not be combined into one workforce-training rate.