There is scarcely any nation-wide data on how the human resource development (HRD) budgets of private business (in Germany over DM 36 billion per year) are allocated to different HRD topics and how they develop against the background of the business cycle. The two widely used research methods, i.e. questionnaire surveys of companies and (less often) interviews of employees carried out independently of their companies (in representative samples), do not give us meaningful results. In contrast and as a supplement, the authors have developed a third approach by carrying out a content analysis of the objective records of HRD planning data. A document analysis of the HRD programs of 53 large-scale companies in West Germany in 1994 and a partial sample for 1990 was undertaken. The authors interpret their findings in relationship to the business cycle (lower new investments require lower amounts of technical and business training), as well as in relationship to company strategy (stronger customer focus and greater employee independence require more personal development training).