It's Hardest to Get Career Training When You Need It the Most

Companies allocate the bulk of their training budgets to their most experienced, highly educated workers, a new report shows. The people who might benefit the most from on-the-job training—young hires with no higher education—get the least amount of training, according to a paper released Wednesday by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (PDF).

The Georgetown researchers analyzed 2013 data from several government departments to measure how much employers spent on training employees and found their investments varied dramatically by age group and education. Employers spent the vast majority of their training budgets on workers age 25 to 54. Employees age 24 or younger, those fresh-faced recent college graduates, had only 3 percent of the company training money parceled out to them. People 55 and over didn't see a lot of educational investment at work, either—just over 11 percent.