I am trying to find out the same information. I am surprised that ASTD does not have any statistics on this. I am not looking to justify a trainer but I am trying to find a benchmark to see how our trainers match up. Please let me know if you have found any info.

I think that this is an "unanswerable" question. As the prior posters have pointed out, you need to look at the total job description. Just consider this one factor to see that: you have a trainer who teaches classes that are one day long: six contact hours, pre-designed. Can she do five in a week? Maybe so, if she does them in the same venue. If she has to travel by air between them, good luck getting her to do three -- she'll be pooped. Sure she can do them, but the quality will suffer. Oh, and can she do five per week for week after week? Only if she is immune to burnout.

P-12 school teachers do five or six hours of contact-time per day plus grading, parent conferences, meetings, mandated continuing education, lesson prep and so forth. They do it for at least nine months (more in some countries) and some teach summer school.

I have many friends who are trainers. They generally do a lot more than training. Some years ago one wanted to maximize his hours in the classroom because he needed the cash (he was paid sort of by the classroom hour). He did over 1500 contact hours. Considering that an 8 hour day had 6 contact hours, and that classes ran 4-5 days a week, he did over 50 weeks per year by doing courses at night. Oh, and the nights he was not teaching he was designing software. Physically, I could not have dealt with that schedule.

I know other trainers who do one four or five day course a month. They also do development, and have other tasks.

One factor I did not see in the previous posts is educating that trainer. Is he or she expected to know something about the content? Is there time allocated for content knowledge or research and for his or her continuing ed as a trainer?

I don't see how one could find a definitive answer to the question.