This doesn't work for widely usable skills with a mobile workforce. Consider… Company A hires a worker and invests in training them, then before they can get t

This doesn't work for widely usable skills with a mobile workforce. Consider… Company A hires a worker and invests in training them, then before they can get their value back out of the education the worker changes to a higher paying job at Company B which doesn't have the training expenses to recoup. Our example worker and Company B are both making their best possible rational decisions. There are solutions to making this work: • It could be unlawful for the worker to use their skills, paid for by Company A, with another company until they had 'paid off' their training. Effective non-competes based on skills. Not a PR win for Company A. Also, you never want a judge to cite the Emancipation Proclamation to you in court. • Company A could train a worker and have the worker incur unavoidable debt so that should they switch companies Company A will still be reimbursed for their training costs. This combines student loans with for profit workplace training. The conflicts of interest are huge and the optics are horrible for Company A. Again, you don't want a judge to say "indentured servant" to you in court. • The worker could independently train themselves in something they feel might be advantageous in the work place, incurring any costs themselves in the hope of recouping that investment. This is the usual method in the US, there are some problems with workers making bad investments and incurring lifelong financial burdens. • Both Company A and Company B could shoulder the cost of training/educating workers and have access to the resulting workers. This is known as taxation and state sponsored education. Workers still may make bad decisions in their training selections. This is the paragraph where I espouse the best way to move forward. I've got nothing. I like the fourth one, but when you add in educational institutions with their own interests and some desire to steer the educational funding to studies which are in demand it gets very complicated.