Education level is emerging as a key divider in who gets trained at work
Workers across eight countries say skills development is a personal priority, but many believe their employers do not share that view – a gap that may be widening inequality in the labour market, according to new research from Indeed’s Hiring Lab.
The findings, released last week, draw on a YouGov survey of more than 39,700 employed adults aged 25 and above. The survey was conducted across Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States in May and June 2025.
In the United States, 67% of workers said skills development was a personal priority, yet only 48% believed their employer felt the same way – a gap of 19 percentage points. Australia recorded a similar divide, with 66% of workers prioritising skills development compared with 51% who believed their employer agreed.
Japan recorded the lowest share of workers citing skills development as a personal priority, at 22%, which researchers attributed to the country’s tradition of employer-led, on-the-job training embedded within workplace structures.
The research also identified a sharp divide along educational lines. In Australia, workers holding a bachelor’s degree or higher were 21 percentage points more likely to receive employer-provided training than those without one – the equal-largest gap among surveyed countries, alongside France.
Ireland recorded the smallest gap at 8 percentage points, but also reported the highest overall training rate, with 86% of degree holders receiving some form of firm-provided training.
Researchers noted that employer-provided training appeared to reinforce rather than narrow existing labour market inequalities.
A separate working paper by Adrjan, Jessen, and Victoria Lanzón, analysing 3.1 million job postings on Indeed between 2018 and 2024, found Spain’s 2022 labour market reform, which sharply restricted the use of temporary contracts, directly increased firm-provided training.
Before the reform, occupations most reliant on temporary contracts were less than half as likely to offer training as those with low temporary contract use, at 3% versus 8%. By 2024, that gap had been eliminated.
Researchers found no comparable increase in France, Germany, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom over the same period, suggesting the effect was specific to Spain’s policy change rather than a broader regional trend.
These findings arrive amid growing alarm over the pace of workforce change globally. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, released in January of that year, found that the skills gap remains the most significant barrier to business transformation, with nearly 40% of skills required in the job market expected to change by 2030.
