L&D Economy 2025
How might Learning and Development fare in the year ahead? Learning leaders provide their assessment of the economics, budgets and investment and priorities in L&D.
The last two years were challenging times in learning and development. We saw increased redundancies and while L&D budgets grew overall, many saw a reduction.
The UK economy was in recession for half of 2023, returned to modest growth in the first half of 2024 before flattening in the second half. Business confidence is low, the lowest in two years and profit forecasts are the lowest in three years.
However, the OBR forecast for the UK economy is growth of 2.0% in 2025 and 1.8% in 2026. Learning and Development traditionally does well as the economy grows, so might we have ‘turned a corner’?
Market analysts, practitioners and commentators join Learning News to offer their assessment of the L&D economy going in to 2025. We hear from Ben Betts, former CEO of Learning Pool, Simon Gibson, Head of Talent at Center Parcs, Giles Hearn FLPI from the LPI, Cathy Hoy from CLO100, Patrick Jocelyn from Omniplex Learning, L&D recruiter Nick Jones MBA, Nahdia Khan, Director, Tasir Consulting, Fiona Leteney from Fosway Group, Matthew Mella from Kineo, Andy Moss from City & Guilds, the researchers Laura Overton, Learning Changemakers and Donald H Taylor, L&D Global Sentiment Survey.
Later in the series we'll look in detail at the employment landscape in a special feature with recruiter Blue Eskimo and look at several learning technology and services vendors.