Changing employer-based training represents one strategy that U.S. firms are adopting to confront recent transformations in the global economy. The new competitive conditions place new and different demands on workers, more of whom are being called upon to use technical, conceptual, and communications skills. Approaches to training in particular sectors depend on numerous factors, including investment in new technology, labor supply constraints, and broad patterns of sectoral competition and restructuring. In business services and nonretail banking, U.S. firms have gone far toward combining training with technological and organizational changes designed to make firms and workers more responsive to the market. In the textile industry, which is a mature manufacturing industry that has responded to international competition with increased market specialization, more direct and interactive relationships among supplier and producer companies, and "quick response" production systems, management views the training challenge as a combination of improving workers' basic skills, significant upgrading of technical skills, and strengthening of supervisor capabilities. In retailing, complex and lengthy training for managers is combined with relatively simple training for lower-level workers. Areas for policy action include basic skills training and measures to enhance the role of mid-level institutions well placed to gather and disseminate information about successful training approaches. (Author/YLB)