> Whatever a competitor is willing to pay, the company that provided the training can just pay that and not risk their employees being poached. Yes they can, i

> Whatever a competitor is willing to pay, the company that provided the training can just pay that and not risk their employees being poached. Yes they can, if they want to go out of business. If I spend $20k to train a new employee, I can afford to pay them their value to me - $20k (less than that if I want to make a profit, but this is the maximum that allows me to stay in business). Meanwhile, my competitor waits 4 weeks for me to do the training and offers their full value. Now I can either let them go, or match the offer - but either way I'm down $20k, while my competitor comes out even. So you can imagine why I might not want to spend money on training. Given your other points, this is only a problem is the cost of the portion of the training that is transferable is more than the extra cost of poaching (over that of hiring a fresh employee). As the job market becomes more liquid (decreasing that poaching cost), this becomes the case more and more.