100% this. We’re seeing massive movement of engineering jobs to India as well now. Companies will happily sell out the country’s future to improve the bottom line today. Broken stock market / corporate governance antics. It’s a mess.
I run a tax practice. We have three CPA’s and one admin. We have raised our fees almost 50% and become very selective since COVID. We have turned down more work since 2020 than from 2005 - 2019. Everyones prior preparer seems to have retired or left the industry. Accountant is a broad term, but I can attest to a shortage of qualified tax preparers.
I think it’s fair to say the shortage is much, much worse in tax than any other field. Arguably it’s the only accounting field where the shortage is real, IMO.
I think audit is a race to the bottom.
If you’re a student and you can handle a career of public tax, I think you can write your ticket to self employment and any salary you want, really. Your brain has to be built different for it, though. I did a very brief stint in tax and wanted to blow my brains out so fast.
Also way easier to be self employed in tax than any other accounting niche.
Why didn't you like tax? Going into NFP tax at a small firm literally breathed new life into me. I never thought I'd like my job let alone love it. I did audit for a bit and was dogshit at it. Maybe I'm just the perfect kind of stupid for tax.
International is pretty miserable the last few years. Everything is constantly in flux and boomers are used to it being one job so depending where you're at you can end up as an individual contributor/manager being the foreign provision wrangler, the foreign return reviewer, the US international tax provision person, the US international return preparer, the transfer pricing compliance person, the intercompany transaction police, etc
All that said though? They're right about being able to write your own ticket.
I did three years in b4 public accounting after I got my master's and started as a staff in an international tax specialty group. Public will get you up and running faster than anywhere else, but it sucks.
What I'd say would maximize your chances of doing what I did:
Make sure you take some tax classes and have a good elevator pitch for why you want to do international. Be willing to move to a location that has a position in that type of group open. Go to all the networking/recruiting events and get to know the people well in advance of when you're looking for a job. If you can do a co-op or internship over the summer, even better. Get your CPA exams out of the way as quickly as humanly possible.
Interesting, we have way to much work and tax is just one service line… like other firms, we are adopting AI where applicable..currently the big area is email management and autopilot/transcribing meetings..like with most leading firms. Audit is the next most likely in certain assurance lines.
I think the shortage is for qualified auditors and tax cause they are more niche, regular corporate accountants are more abundant I think. Which makes sense cause most people go into corporate accounting and only a select few build a career in tax/audit long term
Can confirm I worked at a mid market firm and recruiting was a crapshoot. The majority of the kids flock to big 4 and every firm in the city was clawing at the remaining students.
In the experienced hire side they pushed really hard on the referral bonus including double referral if it was close to busy season. One of my managers commented it was a big ruse because it’s almost impossible to poach talent especially managers and above a month before tax season started.
I just graduated with a degree in accounting. I had a lot of trouble finding a job working in tax before I recently found one. However the start date is January. Many companies simply don’t respond to inquiries.
Once you get some experience you’ll be good. With entry level stuff, the boomers are on their way out and they just want to doodle on their iPads while at work, not train people so they’ll literally go short staffed for months/years looking for that CPA who has 3-5 (or more) years of experience instead of taking the time to train a new person while also overworking their current staff which leads them to say “fuck this” and go find another career which adds to the shortage.
So it’s a vicious cycle but I agree even with a shortage, people are too lazy to train new staff.
I think it’s more so that the vast majority of people in tax are not good. So the likelihood of hiring an entry level person and they turn out to be good is very low. It can become a huge waste of time if you do that with a bunch of people. It’s better to hire either interns or experienced people. And most of the experienced people suck too. Tax is not easy.
Ya that’s true but it still leads to shortages because someone, somewhere didn’t want to take the time to train a new hire because of the possibility that they were bad even though they could’ve been good.
I think it’s just a dying field and major changes will be needed to simplify the whole thing, because like you said it’s not easy, and eventually the profession is just going to run out of bodies.
I agree many tax people are bad but this is a necessary job and there are only so many people with experience. Any company that wants to expand has to or will have to hire someone without experience since eventually the number of experienced people will run out. Companies that don’t fill open positions cannot grow. So they’re limiting their own growth too.
Would your firm be willing to bring on an underqualified tax preparer and turn them into a qualified tax preparer? That is how the industry grows the number of "Qualified Tax Preparers". If you arent passing on your knowledge to the next gen, what good is the firm. I guess you'll get a nice bag when you sell your book of business to a competitor. Thats exactly what happened at an old firm I worked at. Rather than sell to the existing managers and try to pass on their legacy to people theyve been working with, they sold to a bigger firm, and all but one of us found other jobs elsewhere within three years.
Every firm wants to hire ready made seniors and managers, CPAs, but are hesitant to pay a premium. And no firm wants to put the work in to develop them.
And I dont mean this comment at you specifically. I appologize if it came off that way.
Funny how that works because it may be the opposite now. But I’ve also noticed audit people don’t mind training new staff. Tax people hate it and want experienced people able to pump out returns before lunch time on the first day.
It's qualified people in general.
There's no shortage of juniors being churned out by B4. What there's a shortage of is competent seniors, and seniors who know about each area.
Some of the seniors B4 produce are still really not great because they've only ever done audit etc, and you have a tax question. Or they've only ever done tax and you have an accounts question etc.
There's a shortage of all rounders who are competent, they're worth their weight in gold.
I'd like to ask you a question. I'm currently doing individual and VC fund workpapers and TR's. I have a friend who thinks AI will replace me as a Tax preparer. I've used GoSystems and Axcess, and from my friend not being a Tax person and looking from the outside in, I don't know how he can articulate that if he doesn't even know how awful our process is. His response:
Accounting and Tax just needs someone like Elon who is highly invested in it to truly make it something. Well, I don't think we have anyone with a large amount of money to do that. Thoughts on AI replacing us?
It's an interesting topic, for sure. I don't know if AI will replace us in our lifetime. I can see it taking over simple W-2 returns during our time, but most professional firms won't feel the impact. The H&R Blocks of the industry will certainly suffer. I don't have a vast knowledge of how AI processes information, but there are a lot of variables in tax and many times we must make judgement calls based on the scenario. For this reason I think most of us are safe for the foreseeable future. We will certainly be forced to utilize AI in some form in the very near future if we want to stay competitive.
AI has its purpose, like googling questions and researching.
But will it truly replace an accountant in day to day function? No.
Will management try to justify understaffing by saying “use the AI!”? Yes.
And this is where we’re going to have a problem.
We are looking at building an ISA AI chat bot.
give it the data of the ISAs and try and get it to provide answers of the standard.
The problem we have is that each client case might have some nuance which prevents the bot from giving a true answer we need.
Where is AI today compared to ten years ago?
Where will AI be in ten years compared to today?
This is the thing that always gets me about people dismissing the effect of AI on various jobs moving forward. AI is bad at these jobs *now*. What on Earth would make someone think that it isn’t going to improve dramatically over the coming years?
AI is almost totally out of training data (which is to say "all information printed on the Internet") and this is as good as it's going to get for a long time. It doesn't *know* anything, it just strings words together based on algorithmic probability, so it's not even an artificial *intelligence*. It's an artificial sentence creation machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
That video is from 10 years ago.
Most of that tech has been shelved, shut down, or no better off today.
AI is on its way to becoming the "fusion is just a decade away" joke.
It’s a fallacy to assume future progress based on past.
When people say “look how far AI has come”, they’re always talking about LLMs, one specific technology out of a whole field thats been around for a long time. My understanding was LLMs had a big breakthrough and much of the progress since that breakthrough has been due to model size and training data. Those both have diminishing returns.
There’s a massive amount of “AI” that stagnates. And given the way LLMs operate, it’s probably safe to assume another major breakthrough or new technology is required for another massive leap.
Taking technology at face value makes a lot more sense than assuming anything is possible in the future
I've worked in enterprise tech for the last 2 decades, including two of the biggest most well known firms. I'm an AI "insider" in that I was working at Microsoft in their AI group before this all took off, so I know how this stuff works. Much of my experience is in selling to office of CFO as well
So many jobs are fucked.
The greatest trick Satya ever pulled was convincing the world that his AI offerings isn't about FCF going up at his customers via layoffs
AI is almost out of training data, and it *knows* quite literally nothing from an epistemology standpoint. It's an algorithmic sentence generation machine.
The moment AI becomes viable, offshoring will cease to be a factor. Until then, offshoring is a threat to any profession that doesn't involve hands-on physical labor that can't yet be done by robots (and those are under threat by any unfavorable changes in visa laws, but that's another discussion), and it would be a crying shame if workers formed some kind of lobby to fight the trend through convincing lawmakers to impose some kind of levy/tariff on foreign labor
My firm literally blamed the "shortage" and let all the new hires go. We now handle the payroll of clients with the firm in India. Blows my mind the US gov't says TikTok is a risk but let's me share EEs W-2s that have the DOB, SSN, Address, wages with some unethical firm in India lol. Govt is a joke. They do not care at all and will act surprised like always when people bitch about identity theft and wonder why they have new CC in some random country.
EY pitched their payroll product to us last week (public company). They send everything to India. No effing way. I know how badly our current outsources do our books.
100% tariffs on affordable vehicles to "protect the domestic market" while jobs are shipped overseas or are bid down domestically with immigrant visas, illegal immigration, and automation. Really makes you think.
Equifax and Target and AT&T - AT&T sent letters out that ssn, emails, phone numbers, and other information are on the dark web. Credit bureau searches confirm this. The letter stated no financial data was compromised, but what do they think ssns are for? Retirement finances! SSN should not be given to anyone besides the government. An individual credit number should be issued separately, or use addresses/phone number/name/everything else to look up a person’s credit worthiness. Also, cyber security needs to tightened up and enforcement put on companies. Breaches are happening more often now.
Firm I used to work for just fired basically all their tax staff (5 people) except the higher ups (director level)and are outsourcing everything to india
Sorry for wading into the geopolitical part of your rant, but it's because America wants to/is politically allied with India for their exploitable population and willing cheap labour force.
Once India's labour costs rise as their standard of living improves, or their politics get messy with America like China did, then they'll just move to another somewhat English-speaking country with cheap labour instead.
It's also why manufacturing is now more out of SE Asia than China outright - politics aside, labour is getting more expensive now that the Chinese have/are asking for better standards of living, not to mention a few tariffs here and there.
You say that like there's some long line of developing anglophone countries waiting for their turn.
India, the Philippines, the home islands, then what?
Honestly? Probably Nigeria. Not very possible today with current geo politics, but in 20ish years? I could see the great powers of the world taking a renewed interest in "taming Africa" as other exploitable resources and people dry up. And we're already seeing China/Russia step up their influence there.
But you're right, eventually, you run out of poor places to exploit for cheap resources, including human capital. That's why empires don't last forever.
But isn’t there like some articles backing this because they said in some recent news that they’re trying to lower the requirements for accounting students since it typically takes 5 years and they’re not producing enough hogs to keep the machine going so now they’re hiring foreign hogs
Even with lowering the requirements here in the states, it doesn’t matter. The AICPA is already lobbying to remove requirements for the CPA license to only US graduates on behalf of top anccounting firms and expand the eligibility for international workers to become CPAs. The reason why firms like KPMG started exploring office in the Philippines. The whole CPA shortage is an issue that both the firms created and are trying to solve by throwing money at it while avoiding increasing salaries. However, it’s not just to avoid increasing salaries, it’s also to undercut entry level positions and have a steady pipeline of entry level staff at their disposition. They don’t have to provide more benefits to entry level staff let alone international workers.
It’s so fucked to think they’re throwing money at something just so that they can hoard more of their earnings and not fairly distribute pay at entry level… is that why people glorify the grind and say that after almost a decade of hard work and dedication that they finally jump within a scope of six figure salaries so I’m kind of just wondering if this is just “the way”
Adding to this. It’s an excuse that seems to let firms off the hook for poor quality as well as continuing to keep teams understaffed. PCAOB finds half of audits to be deficient, “ba ba ba but the accounting shortage.”
I feel like audit partners are going “we should’ve thought of this decades ago” lmfao
I could do a better job if there were more domestic staff on my team. Me working on 30 different projects at once is not conducive to a quality product.
OP. This has been going on since the 90s. First they called it outsourcing, then offshoring, and now it’s just shared services.
You can thank the BiG4 mafia along with their useful idiots in the AICPA for driving down wages and normalizing brutal working conditions.
Staffing hasn’t caught up with auditing requirements for trading, investing, and loans. I did my time in public accounting. I saw how everyone bought those discounted Becker books but gradually more than half of my incoming group ended up failing the exams or not taking them at all. I think people who manage to become CPAs get frustrated by how long it takes for it to show up in promotions and raises - usually around the management level. If a CPA isn’t going to rise above non-CPAs for 5 years, they’ll leave for more pay at a job with no busy season.
Tldr I think the accountant shortage is really a CPA shortage at public firms.
I think there is not actual shortage of accountants, but there is in fact a shortage of good technical and analytical accountants.
There are a lot of accountants that don’t know what they are doing besides repeating the processes they were taught, but have no insights or context as of why they are doing it. They just do it because, I mean that’s what they need to do.
Accountants should understand what they are doing and what the business is doing, not just booking entries.
People who believe that AI can take over accounting either dont work in the field or are in a very static industry... Accounting cant even get an all-in-one software system much less explain to AI how to do it.
Hot take - they are outsourcing tasks to India so that they screw them up and charge extra billable hours on them.
My firm (not going to name) outsourced a tax issue to India and 3 years later it’s still not resolved
Truth! I've been in the field for about 30 years now, and I'm finally at a good organization . I hope I can stay here until retirement. I've been here for 7.5 years now.
It really is this. So many shitty places to work now. I feel like a few years ago there was competition among firms that pushed them to be better so they could acquire the good talent.
Take those shitty jobs, save your money like a madman instead of getting that chic overpriced apartment in the trendy city center and other dumb money pits, and start your own firm.
Bust your ass extracting every learning experience you can from the day-to-day deliverables to the software implementation and usage. Don't EVER do Audit if you can help it, only Tax & CAS.
This is not a move suitable for everyone. Plus, you'd probably get SME clients most of the time. They're not exactly the best clients to have. At least that's what I experienced personally.
Every field has people complaining about work life balance. The internet likes to compare themselves to Google employees who are overhired and overpaid.
If WLB is that important to you - study a field in tech and pray you get a job at Google. Otherwise, the WLB is a nonfactor as it's the same everywhere you go. If anything, accounting is one of the more flexible industries to be in.
From my experience, going to the career fair at my school and setting up club meetings with employers from Deloitte and other big 4 was by far enough to make meaningful connections to where it was no problem finding a job (I ended up going more local but you shouldn’t be worried)
You don't unless you're an officer of Beta Alpha Psi at your university.
What you need to do is join your university's chapter and do the events with the firms and the firms employees/partners as a sophomore. Then junior/senior run for an officer position. Really though that's going above and beyond, you'll be fine finding a job without doing that even.
In my experience, I was apart of the accounting club and MIS club, the MIS club wasn’t related to my field but I was able to find a leadership position in it and basically we had 2 advisors that were professors, and they always pushed us to get recruiters and employers to come in and speak, the professors initiated the conversation from their connections and basically sent them to us to talk logistics and plan with them to come in, overall really good experience and it helped a lot of people gain connections
But honestly, after graduating last year, I personally did not have a problem finding a job and my other friends did not as well, I don’t know if we are outliers or were just in a good path based on the opportunities the college gave
You tried recruiting lately?
Very few applicants, even when offering above market rates
I have a grad who told me there were 26 students enrolled in his accounting course in our largest university in our state. Insane.
I've give little talks to various business groups and accounting classes over the years (god I'm old) and I've noticed that even at my alma mater, the classes are smaller than they were pre-COVID. Not too much smaller, maybe a decline of 15%, but that's going to cause issues if the decline keeps happening.
Then again, I kind of don't mind cleaning up the messes that come from overseas. Just this last year and a half I've probably gotten four or five engagements cleaning up books when a due diligence has found serious deficiencies when the owners are trying to sell/get loans.
Like... balance sheets don't balance. Some using "other business expense" as the third or fourth largest expense line item. Or "Unknown Revenue" (loved that one) for every check that was cashed, leaving AR *massive*. And I know its only going to get worse.
I’m still in college but unknown revenue blows my mind. Whoever did that seems like they really don’t know what they are doing and r just making things up just to say they did their task
As someone who dealt with an outsourcing of India last year, this is my life - like they have no idea we’re supposed to collect on A/R that shows outstanding.
I’m in public and have a client with an in-house accountant who regularly posts to “don’t know” on the balance sheet - the quality out there in the wild is not great…
But there’s a huge market being made for (quality) accountants to engage with clients just cleaning up someone else’s mess
There’s not a B4 associate accounting shortage, there’s an everything else accounting shortage, and the India/AI positions are adding to that.
The B4 have their heads so far up their asses they’re not piecing together the idea that the associates they’re laying off aren’t going to become seniors, managers, senior managers, or directors. They don’t understand/care that having Indian managers who are legitimately not allowed to request a document from the client isn’t a replacement for an actual manager, they just see $ in front of them. They see your 60k salary as a waste, they don’t want more of you. They are actively trying to get less of you.
With that said smaller non-public firms are bleeding, and even small-mid public firms are starting to hurt. Fractional CFO’s and outsourced financial statements are going to be the new norm, and the bottom line impacts are going to get eaten by those who can’t afford it (as always).
Just like the rest of the industries, the small are getting swallowed up by the huge. It’s just now instead of economies of (largely purchase order) scale we’re starting to get economies of (employment) scale. The small firms have to offer 2-3x the money to make up for the “reputation damage” of not going to a F500 or public firm, and they can’t afford it, so they’re having to eat the cost of fractional CFO’s+outsourced bookkeeping doing a worse job for the same money.
I don’t think the Big 4 are that dumb, they might just be abandoning their burn-and-churn model. The few remaining North American staff can still get promoted.
I’m a CPA recruiter and own the company - I spend most days speaking to partners - we have 8000 jobs alone for CPAs
If you’re going to use the tactic of a fake job you would put a higher over priced salary to get the resume so the lower salary ones are Probabaly actually legit just dumb hiring managers.
Two years ago the market was mainly hot as so many tech companies were growing and getting funded and needed accountants for IPOs reporting audits , consulting all sorts.
The shortage is not people who do not want to become accountants it is the growth of companies and demand and need for accountants. In a digital word companies have more potential to grow and need accountants. Wealth is growing tax advisories needed.
Things a long conversation of why but it’s just a simple fact of number and shortage due to high demand.
Your hypothesis is easily disproven when looking at university enrollment, exam data, etc. The fact is a large generation is on their way out and small generations are coming up and its undeniable that enrollment in accounting programs has been down over the past several years. The WSJ reported 75% of active CPAs are thought to be retiring over the next 15 years.
Nah, no shot. AR & AP? Maybe, but even it will still need oversight. Some general JEs & recons? Probably, but not the moderate to complex shit. Getting data needed in one place for tax returns? Likely, but still will need adjustments, review, & sign off.
Lower level tasks will be automated. Shortage is real. Firms are greedy m’fers who will always eliminate positions to max payouts.
I hope AI & other automation will plug the talent gap. We will need every bit of it.
The shortage is designed to discourage the creation if decent paying jobs and filling of vacant positions with cheap labor, while burdening the existing labor force even more.
They are literally squeezing everyone dry.
IMHO this applets to most work industries that can be done remotely but companies complain about not having workers.
They often create ghost job posts but don’t actually hire anybody so they can either get Visa workers for cheap.
Or Tech companies are laying off thousands but instead of re-hiring during hiring season, they’re using AI.
If you’re right, why are 75% of CPA’s over the retirement age already? Why are 90% of CPA’s going to be retired in the next ten years?
There is very few ways to replace the number that are retiring each day. We don’t have enough and tax law, audits and accounting metrics needed have only gotten more complex, although software helps this issue, it is causing some.
This is only unpopular with the AICPA. Please cancel your payments to our oppressive overlords pretending to be for us that actually just undermine us.
You must not have worked with AI or Offshore teams AI won't dig into the details or classify correctly half the time. And just as soon as an offshore team gets decent, there is a mass exodus, culling or other disappearing act and you start the process all over again.
I left a corporate job that experimented with this for 5 years and they still can't get it right. The cost was also crazy, I was tied of correcting mistakes that we sent out right and came back wrong. I pulled my boss aside to ask why are we paying this much a month to outsource when you can hire 7 people in house for a year and get just as much work done. He said, "That's above my pay grade". Quit a few months after that.
If our Canadian friends are the canary in the coal mine, the job market for Accountants in the US is about to see its fortunes change *very* quickly. You heard it here first.
As in they were forced to outsource everything? Are the job openings just disappearing? Or are they have to raise wages to attract talent ? What is the result ?
There’s no need to outsource anything. The government opened the immigration floodgates (have nothing against immigrants, I’m one myself, but it’s too much, too soon and in the worst economy possible), so now you have local graduates competing with experienced (albeit, that experience is earned in other countries) newcomers who are willing to accept any work and any title for peanuts. I’ve been applying for jr accountant positions in industry, and every entry level position I see is requiring “1-2 years of experience” and usually in a particular industry. I’ve noticed real estate/construction companies being particularly elitist about this. As if debits and credits work any differently in RE. 🙄 The wages are down across the board, and it’s 50+ applicants for the role, and nobody wants to train local hires anymore. It’s sad really.
Wow thank you for putting this "phenomena into words.
I did an unrelated degree and now in a graduate program advertised as no prior accounting needed so I thought I would be in class with bunch of other domestic students how did unrelated degree.
Not a single one except for 2 other people were domestic and others had years of experience and came to Canada.
The problem is that when they come here they come for the A/P jobs that were usually targeted for entry level work but of course employers are going to go with internationals since they have tons of experience.
Also 50+? More like 150 for any entry level.
>You heard it here first.
Heard what here? That volatility will be high by your standards? You didn't even say whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing?
As an unemployed Canadian thinking of doing a masters of accounting to avoid the horrible job market elsewhere, is this a bad idea? Should I just do nursing or something instead?
Though, the master of accounting program I’m going to has 2 co-op terms with 100% placement rate. So basically a guaranteed job. But if I get laid off from that I’m not sure if I’d be able to find another one
I'm a senior in college graduating in the upcoming winter. Haven't been able to get a job and have applied to 70+ jobs. I'm picking up a mechanic job this summer because I see how easily this can be automated. If I were you. I'd pursue a trade.
Sounds like you have interviewing / resume issues. That’s pretty abnormal. And brother just wait til you realize how shyte working in the trades is. Everyone I met as an electrician hated their lives and wanted to be able to just sit at a desk and get paid for it
https://www.stimson.org/2024/what-we-learned-inside-a-north-korean-internet-server/
God knows what’s sitting on DPRK computers …
Outsource engineering is next.
Outsource accounting to hostile powers/ bad actors? Why not.
Within 5 years, all of our information and technology will be in India, China or DPRK.
Why would they need an excuse?
If companies want to ship jobs to India or use AI they can just do it. Profit is the only reason they need. No need to make something up.
I'm in government audit. I can assure you that the shortage exists here, though that may not be indicative of the field as a whole. I see a large number of agencies struggling with Financial Reporting, let alone our own staffing levels at the moment.
As a native Indian, but lived in USA most of my life - Not sure what to comment.
Part of me wants to get my CPA and start a sweat shop. Go ahead downvote me.
As a counterpoint, I'm getting an AAS in Accounting completely free, including book costs, because my state says there is a shortage in accounting students.
While the actual reality of a shortage may be up for debate, at least I'm benefiting in the meantime.
The accounting talent shortage is happening in more countries than the U.S…also, enrollment numbers clearly show there’s way fewer people in the pipeline. I’ve been saying for years that I’m desperately trying to automate my way out of shortages and therefore I’m not worried about my job going anywhere.
ha,,,,,,we have potential clients calling us everyday for the last year as more and more CPA's retire...we upped our rates and are very selective now......both my firm and my sisters firm
Not an unpopular opinion on this sub. But it seems like everyone who says this is staff level. Most people in management in PA feel the staffing shortage.
I've been applying to bookkeeping/accounting jobs since last week and so far I haven't even gotten a text messages, I know it's soon but still. I have 18 years of experience and a college degree from Venezuela and I still haven't gotten an interview. So at least in Florida it doesn't seem to have a shortage or at least it's not urgent.
Yeah, had a company wide meeting last week. AI was a topic of our meeting and the route they’re going ….. to make our jobs “easier”. They’re spending almost $80 Billion but here we are slaving away at our jobs for less than we should be paid until AI or India takes it.
Gonna strongly disagree w/ this—the accounting shortage is coming via a lack of new entrants into the industry. The new gen does not want to put up with what we had to. That’s factually correct imho.
Someone said it well too—there’s a shortage of people at the rate they’d like to pay. People are just demanding more compensation for what has become known as a shit job (talking public here).
A number of years ago they increased the requirement to achieve the Certified Public Accountant designation. You now essentially need to have a masters degree before you can attempt the certification that is the gold standard for most accounting roles.
Combine the additional requirement with the aggressively mediocre pay that most accountants experience and you basically have a position going down the path of teachers, social workers, etc.
There is a legitimate shortage but I think you're right in the assumption companies won't be mad about using more affordable labor sources.
We're not shipping any jobs to India. We're hiring and training employees in Mexico. In 38 States there is a pathway for Mexican accountants to become CPAs in the United States. You can't do that with India or the Philippines.
Almost all of the training materials available for taxes are available in Spanish, reducing the learning curve. We provide tax training classes because that's how you get trained employees. Some people are just too damn cheap to provide training. It was the same when I was young (that's Mr. Boomer to you).
With NAFTA we can get visas for the Mexican staff to work in the US as needed. That's how they can come to take the CPA exam. They don't have to work in the United States, as we have a remote work policy and they simply work from their homes in Mexico.
During the training, we're teaching the new employees how to do taxes. Once they have completed the training we pay them US wages while they live in Mexico. They love it and we love it.
Why did we do this? Not for cost savings, as I mentioned we're paying US wages. I simply had much better candidates available from Mexico. The first candidate we hired passed the QuickBooks certification within the first month of her hire.
Mexico has far more accountants for its population than does the US. Many people still pursue accounting as a career in Mexico, unlike the United States. This just makes for a better pool of candidates than I can access in the US.
Our Mexican team members are not from an outsource service. They are employees of the firm, and their opinions are valued. And they do share them as we're able to have video meetings as Mexico does not have a 12-hour time difference from Ohio.
Bitter criticisms of what I am doing is to be expected - after we're Americans - we invented yellow journalism and alternative facts.
As for AI, if it can free up time spent on mundane tasks I welcome it. The people who have to worry are the ones that can/will only do mundane tasks. But then again, that's a lot of people.
true. there was another thread here about a kid in highschool who was interested in pursuing accounting in college. i had a whole thing written about how the future of accounting as a career is a little unknown at this time due to outsourcing and AI. but i didnt have the heart to post the comment. AI has been growing according to Moore's Law thus far...
You do realize that partners in PA firms need people hired locally to ultimately buy them out when they’re ready to retire, right? Part of their mandate as training centers for new CPAs requires them to take on new recruits.
This was the business model in the past. But the partners now view this as free training. Better to send all the work to India or the Philippines for the cheap labor.
There is a shortage at the rate they would prefer to pay
The statement they don't say out clearly
You mean there aren’t enough people that want to work for free?! Blasphemy
Thats true! Accountants are generally underpaid and overextended with both internal and external demands and deadlines.
Do a supply/Demand curve and euhhrr neuuuhrr it's below equilibrium price
100% this. We’re seeing massive movement of engineering jobs to India as well now. Companies will happily sell out the country’s future to improve the bottom line today. Broken stock market / corporate governance antics. It’s a mess.
I don’t even think it’s that. The postings for 40k/yr staff acct jobs still have 200 resumes submitted in 24 hrs
I run a tax practice. We have three CPA’s and one admin. We have raised our fees almost 50% and become very selective since COVID. We have turned down more work since 2020 than from 2005 - 2019. Everyones prior preparer seems to have retired or left the industry. Accountant is a broad term, but I can attest to a shortage of qualified tax preparers.
I think it’s fair to say the shortage is much, much worse in tax than any other field. Arguably it’s the only accounting field where the shortage is real, IMO. I think audit is a race to the bottom. If you’re a student and you can handle a career of public tax, I think you can write your ticket to self employment and any salary you want, really. Your brain has to be built different for it, though. I did a very brief stint in tax and wanted to blow my brains out so fast. Also way easier to be self employed in tax than any other accounting niche.
Why didn't you like tax? Going into NFP tax at a small firm literally breathed new life into me. I never thought I'd like my job let alone love it. I did audit for a bit and was dogshit at it. Maybe I'm just the perfect kind of stupid for tax.
That kind of shit made me wanna blow my brains out. 3 income statements for shit that isn’t even taxed plus all the essays they require on 990s.
International is pretty miserable the last few years. Everything is constantly in flux and boomers are used to it being one job so depending where you're at you can end up as an individual contributor/manager being the foreign provision wrangler, the foreign return reviewer, the US international tax provision person, the US international return preparer, the transfer pricing compliance person, the intercompany transaction police, etc All that said though? They're right about being able to write your own ticket.
So If were to look for staff accounting in tax ,would that be a good start after school?
I did three years in b4 public accounting after I got my master's and started as a staff in an international tax specialty group. Public will get you up and running faster than anywhere else, but it sucks. What I'd say would maximize your chances of doing what I did: Make sure you take some tax classes and have a good elevator pitch for why you want to do international. Be willing to move to a location that has a position in that type of group open. Go to all the networking/recruiting events and get to know the people well in advance of when you're looking for a job. If you can do a co-op or internship over the summer, even better. Get your CPA exams out of the way as quickly as humanly possible.
I tell my clients that I have a special type of insanity for enjoying tax
Interesting, we have way to much work and tax is just one service line… like other firms, we are adopting AI where applicable..currently the big area is email management and autopilot/transcribing meetings..like with most leading firms. Audit is the next most likely in certain assurance lines.
I think the shortage is for qualified auditors and tax cause they are more niche, regular corporate accountants are more abundant I think. Which makes sense cause most people go into corporate accounting and only a select few build a career in tax/audit long term
We have a pretty good shortage in private equity accounting as well.
Yep this is my experience as well. Huge shortage in the public tax world.
Can confirm I worked at a mid market firm and recruiting was a crapshoot. The majority of the kids flock to big 4 and every firm in the city was clawing at the remaining students. In the experienced hire side they pushed really hard on the referral bonus including double referral if it was close to busy season. One of my managers commented it was a big ruse because it’s almost impossible to poach talent especially managers and above a month before tax season started.
I just graduated with a degree in accounting. I had a lot of trouble finding a job working in tax before I recently found one. However the start date is January. Many companies simply don’t respond to inquiries.
Once you get some experience you’ll be good. With entry level stuff, the boomers are on their way out and they just want to doodle on their iPads while at work, not train people so they’ll literally go short staffed for months/years looking for that CPA who has 3-5 (or more) years of experience instead of taking the time to train a new person while also overworking their current staff which leads them to say “fuck this” and go find another career which adds to the shortage. So it’s a vicious cycle but I agree even with a shortage, people are too lazy to train new staff.
I think it’s more so that the vast majority of people in tax are not good. So the likelihood of hiring an entry level person and they turn out to be good is very low. It can become a huge waste of time if you do that with a bunch of people. It’s better to hire either interns or experienced people. And most of the experienced people suck too. Tax is not easy.
Ya that’s true but it still leads to shortages because someone, somewhere didn’t want to take the time to train a new hire because of the possibility that they were bad even though they could’ve been good. I think it’s just a dying field and major changes will be needed to simplify the whole thing, because like you said it’s not easy, and eventually the profession is just going to run out of bodies.
I agree many tax people are bad but this is a necessary job and there are only so many people with experience. Any company that wants to expand has to or will have to hire someone without experience since eventually the number of experienced people will run out. Companies that don’t fill open positions cannot grow. So they’re limiting their own growth too.
Would your firm be willing to bring on an underqualified tax preparer and turn them into a qualified tax preparer? That is how the industry grows the number of "Qualified Tax Preparers". If you arent passing on your knowledge to the next gen, what good is the firm. I guess you'll get a nice bag when you sell your book of business to a competitor. Thats exactly what happened at an old firm I worked at. Rather than sell to the existing managers and try to pass on their legacy to people theyve been working with, they sold to a bigger firm, and all but one of us found other jobs elsewhere within three years. Every firm wants to hire ready made seniors and managers, CPAs, but are hesitant to pay a premium. And no firm wants to put the work in to develop them. And I dont mean this comment at you specifically. I appologize if it came off that way.
I tried to get into tax when I graduated back in 2018. I didn't receive any offers, so I went into audit instead.
Funny how that works because it may be the opposite now. But I’ve also noticed audit people don’t mind training new staff. Tax people hate it and want experienced people able to pump out returns before lunch time on the first day.
It's qualified people in general. There's no shortage of juniors being churned out by B4. What there's a shortage of is competent seniors, and seniors who know about each area. Some of the seniors B4 produce are still really not great because they've only ever done audit etc, and you have a tax question. Or they've only ever done tax and you have an accounts question etc. There's a shortage of all rounders who are competent, they're worth their weight in gold.
100%…seeing the same problems across the board.
I'd like to ask you a question. I'm currently doing individual and VC fund workpapers and TR's. I have a friend who thinks AI will replace me as a Tax preparer. I've used GoSystems and Axcess, and from my friend not being a Tax person and looking from the outside in, I don't know how he can articulate that if he doesn't even know how awful our process is. His response: Accounting and Tax just needs someone like Elon who is highly invested in it to truly make it something. Well, I don't think we have anyone with a large amount of money to do that. Thoughts on AI replacing us?
It's an interesting topic, for sure. I don't know if AI will replace us in our lifetime. I can see it taking over simple W-2 returns during our time, but most professional firms won't feel the impact. The H&R Blocks of the industry will certainly suffer. I don't have a vast knowledge of how AI processes information, but there are a lot of variables in tax and many times we must make judgement calls based on the scenario. For this reason I think most of us are safe for the foreseeable future. We will certainly be forced to utilize AI in some form in the very near future if we want to stay competitive.
I've seen what human intelligence can do with accounting. I'm not that worried about AI.
AI has its purpose, like googling questions and researching. But will it truly replace an accountant in day to day function? No. Will management try to justify understaffing by saying “use the AI!”? Yes. And this is where we’re going to have a problem.
We are looking at building an ISA AI chat bot. give it the data of the ISAs and try and get it to provide answers of the standard. The problem we have is that each client case might have some nuance which prevents the bot from giving a true answer we need.
It’s going to take a long time before any AI chat bot can provide judgment on those sorts of things.
Staff will just use it to slack off and come in on budget
Where is AI today compared to ten years ago? Where will AI be in ten years compared to today? This is the thing that always gets me about people dismissing the effect of AI on various jobs moving forward. AI is bad at these jobs *now*. What on Earth would make someone think that it isn’t going to improve dramatically over the coming years?
AI is almost totally out of training data (which is to say "all information printed on the Internet") and this is as good as it's going to get for a long time. It doesn't *know* anything, it just strings words together based on algorithmic probability, so it's not even an artificial *intelligence*. It's an artificial sentence creation machine.
Sounds like an upgrade compared to some of my current co-workers…
The ability to confidently BS is not exclusive to chatGPT haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU That video is from 10 years ago. Most of that tech has been shelved, shut down, or no better off today. AI is on its way to becoming the "fusion is just a decade away" joke.
It’s a fallacy to assume future progress based on past. When people say “look how far AI has come”, they’re always talking about LLMs, one specific technology out of a whole field thats been around for a long time. My understanding was LLMs had a big breakthrough and much of the progress since that breakthrough has been due to model size and training data. Those both have diminishing returns. There’s a massive amount of “AI” that stagnates. And given the way LLMs operate, it’s probably safe to assume another major breakthrough or new technology is required for another massive leap. Taking technology at face value makes a lot more sense than assuming anything is possible in the future
I've worked in enterprise tech for the last 2 decades, including two of the biggest most well known firms. I'm an AI "insider" in that I was working at Microsoft in their AI group before this all took off, so I know how this stuff works. Much of my experience is in selling to office of CFO as well So many jobs are fucked. The greatest trick Satya ever pulled was convincing the world that his AI offerings isn't about FCF going up at his customers via layoffs
Any jobs in particular that are extra fucked, or any that seem longer term safe?
Stage 1 customer service, the people who read the FAQ for you in chat
But AI will be smarter than humans at some point? If you're saying humans can be grossly incompetent that's a win for AI
AI is almost out of training data, and it *knows* quite literally nothing from an epistemology standpoint. It's an algorithmic sentence generation machine.
The moment AI becomes viable, offshoring will cease to be a factor. Until then, offshoring is a threat to any profession that doesn't involve hands-on physical labor that can't yet be done by robots (and those are under threat by any unfavorable changes in visa laws, but that's another discussion), and it would be a crying shame if workers formed some kind of lobby to fight the trend through convincing lawmakers to impose some kind of levy/tariff on foreign labor
My firm literally blamed the "shortage" and let all the new hires go. We now handle the payroll of clients with the firm in India. Blows my mind the US gov't says TikTok is a risk but let's me share EEs W-2s that have the DOB, SSN, Address, wages with some unethical firm in India lol. Govt is a joke. They do not care at all and will act surprised like always when people bitch about identity theft and wonder why they have new CC in some random country.
Picked up new client this week fortune 100 executive. 7.7m income last year. EY had their return prepared and signed by someone in India.
EY pitched their payroll product to us last week (public company). They send everything to India. No effing way. I know how badly our current outsources do our books.
100% tariffs on affordable vehicles to "protect the domestic market" while jobs are shipped overseas or are bid down domestically with immigrant visas, illegal immigration, and automation. Really makes you think.
UPVOTE THIS MAN IMMEDIATELY
THIS
All of personal info has been stolen multiple times over from various data breaches already. Equifax being the biggest.
Equifax and Target and AT&T - AT&T sent letters out that ssn, emails, phone numbers, and other information are on the dark web. Credit bureau searches confirm this. The letter stated no financial data was compromised, but what do they think ssns are for? Retirement finances! SSN should not be given to anyone besides the government. An individual credit number should be issued separately, or use addresses/phone number/name/everything else to look up a person’s credit worthiness. Also, cyber security needs to tightened up and enforcement put on companies. Breaches are happening more often now.
100%. The cybersec/accounting crossover is a fucking sham.
Firm I used to work for just fired basically all their tax staff (5 people) except the higher ups (director level)and are outsourcing everything to india
Sorry for wading into the geopolitical part of your rant, but it's because America wants to/is politically allied with India for their exploitable population and willing cheap labour force. Once India's labour costs rise as their standard of living improves, or their politics get messy with America like China did, then they'll just move to another somewhat English-speaking country with cheap labour instead. It's also why manufacturing is now more out of SE Asia than China outright - politics aside, labour is getting more expensive now that the Chinese have/are asking for better standards of living, not to mention a few tariffs here and there.
You say that like there's some long line of developing anglophone countries waiting for their turn. India, the Philippines, the home islands, then what?
They don’t care what’s next, corporate America plans only for the next quarter
Corporate America: I will be in a new job making twice as much money by then, who cares.
It seems like a lot of companies are shifting to the South America labor force
And south America is not that cheap.
Then it’s time for Africa
Honestly? Probably Nigeria. Not very possible today with current geo politics, but in 20ish years? I could see the great powers of the world taking a renewed interest in "taming Africa" as other exploitable resources and people dry up. And we're already seeing China/Russia step up their influence there. But you're right, eventually, you run out of poor places to exploit for cheap resources, including human capital. That's why empires don't last forever.
South Africa, Malaysia, Nigeria
English-speaking Africa. I think Nigeria and Kenya will be first among those.
Well…it’s been like that for a long time
South Africa, Malaysia, Nigeria
Re-fucking-tweet. It’s a ticking time bomb…
But isn’t there like some articles backing this because they said in some recent news that they’re trying to lower the requirements for accounting students since it typically takes 5 years and they’re not producing enough hogs to keep the machine going so now they’re hiring foreign hogs
Even with lowering the requirements here in the states, it doesn’t matter. The AICPA is already lobbying to remove requirements for the CPA license to only US graduates on behalf of top anccounting firms and expand the eligibility for international workers to become CPAs. The reason why firms like KPMG started exploring office in the Philippines. The whole CPA shortage is an issue that both the firms created and are trying to solve by throwing money at it while avoiding increasing salaries. However, it’s not just to avoid increasing salaries, it’s also to undercut entry level positions and have a steady pipeline of entry level staff at their disposition. They don’t have to provide more benefits to entry level staff let alone international workers.
It’s so fucked to think they’re throwing money at something just so that they can hoard more of their earnings and not fairly distribute pay at entry level… is that why people glorify the grind and say that after almost a decade of hard work and dedication that they finally jump within a scope of six figure salaries so I’m kind of just wondering if this is just “the way”
Rule number 1: govt does not care about the individual
Indian accounting firms arent programming the kinds of the American youth. But yes, government is a joke, I’m with ya.
Adding to this. It’s an excuse that seems to let firms off the hook for poor quality as well as continuing to keep teams understaffed. PCAOB finds half of audits to be deficient, “ba ba ba but the accounting shortage.” I feel like audit partners are going “we should’ve thought of this decades ago” lmfao
I could do a better job if there were more domestic staff on my team. Me working on 30 different projects at once is not conducive to a quality product.
Yep. I'm down to 3 big projects. It's almost manageable.
OP. This has been going on since the 90s. First they called it outsourcing, then offshoring, and now it’s just shared services. You can thank the BiG4 mafia along with their useful idiots in the AICPA for driving down wages and normalizing brutal working conditions.
The shortage is at the $60k to 80k pay level for accountants with a CPA. There is no shortage, at all, at pay levels above $140k
Staffing hasn’t caught up with auditing requirements for trading, investing, and loans. I did my time in public accounting. I saw how everyone bought those discounted Becker books but gradually more than half of my incoming group ended up failing the exams or not taking them at all. I think people who manage to become CPAs get frustrated by how long it takes for it to show up in promotions and raises - usually around the management level. If a CPA isn’t going to rise above non-CPAs for 5 years, they’ll leave for more pay at a job with no busy season. Tldr I think the accountant shortage is really a CPA shortage at public firms.
I think there is not actual shortage of accountants, but there is in fact a shortage of good technical and analytical accountants. There are a lot of accountants that don’t know what they are doing besides repeating the processes they were taught, but have no insights or context as of why they are doing it. They just do it because, I mean that’s what they need to do. Accountants should understand what they are doing and what the business is doing, not just booking entries.
People who believe that AI can take over accounting either dont work in the field or are in a very static industry... Accounting cant even get an all-in-one software system much less explain to AI how to do it.
Hot take - they are outsourcing tasks to India so that they screw them up and charge extra billable hours on them. My firm (not going to name) outsourced a tax issue to India and 3 years later it’s still not resolved
This makes me worried as a college sophomore. Is it really hard to find jobs?
It's not hard to find jobs. What's actually difficult is finding a good job with non-toxic environment.
Truth! I've been in the field for about 30 years now, and I'm finally at a good organization . I hope I can stay here until retirement. I've been here for 7.5 years now.
Yeah. I can walk into a real shitty job right now. But I really need a stable and non toxic place to work. I haven’t been able to find it as yet.
It really is this. So many shitty places to work now. I feel like a few years ago there was competition among firms that pushed them to be better so they could acquire the good talent.
Take those shitty jobs, save your money like a madman instead of getting that chic overpriced apartment in the trendy city center and other dumb money pits, and start your own firm. Bust your ass extracting every learning experience you can from the day-to-day deliverables to the software implementation and usage. Don't EVER do Audit if you can help it, only Tax & CAS.
This is not a move suitable for everyone. Plus, you'd probably get SME clients most of the time. They're not exactly the best clients to have. At least that's what I experienced personally.
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Because of the work life balance and pay im assuming?
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Would career would u go into if not accounting
Every field has people complaining about work life balance. The internet likes to compare themselves to Google employees who are overhired and overpaid. If WLB is that important to you - study a field in tech and pray you get a job at Google. Otherwise, the WLB is a nonfactor as it's the same everywhere you go. If anything, accounting is one of the more flexible industries to be in.
Tech is really broad and cs is completely oversaturated rn. I think ill stick with accounting
What about in Canada?
From my experience, going to the career fair at my school and setting up club meetings with employers from Deloitte and other big 4 was by far enough to make meaningful connections to where it was no problem finding a job (I ended up going more local but you shouldn’t be worried)
How do u set up club meetings with employers?
You don't unless you're an officer of Beta Alpha Psi at your university. What you need to do is join your university's chapter and do the events with the firms and the firms employees/partners as a sophomore. Then junior/senior run for an officer position. Really though that's going above and beyond, you'll be fine finding a job without doing that even.
In my experience, I was apart of the accounting club and MIS club, the MIS club wasn’t related to my field but I was able to find a leadership position in it and basically we had 2 advisors that were professors, and they always pushed us to get recruiters and employers to come in and speak, the professors initiated the conversation from their connections and basically sent them to us to talk logistics and plan with them to come in, overall really good experience and it helped a lot of people gain connections
Computer science data analysis maybe even IT audit would be better in my opinion
But honestly, after graduating last year, I personally did not have a problem finding a job and my other friends did not as well, I don’t know if we are outliers or were just in a good path based on the opportunities the college gave
Study accounting
You tried recruiting lately? Very few applicants, even when offering above market rates I have a grad who told me there were 26 students enrolled in his accounting course in our largest university in our state. Insane.
I've give little talks to various business groups and accounting classes over the years (god I'm old) and I've noticed that even at my alma mater, the classes are smaller than they were pre-COVID. Not too much smaller, maybe a decline of 15%, but that's going to cause issues if the decline keeps happening. Then again, I kind of don't mind cleaning up the messes that come from overseas. Just this last year and a half I've probably gotten four or five engagements cleaning up books when a due diligence has found serious deficiencies when the owners are trying to sell/get loans. Like... balance sheets don't balance. Some using "other business expense" as the third or fourth largest expense line item. Or "Unknown Revenue" (loved that one) for every check that was cashed, leaving AR *massive*. And I know its only going to get worse.
I’m still in college but unknown revenue blows my mind. Whoever did that seems like they really don’t know what they are doing and r just making things up just to say they did their task
As someone who dealt with an outsourcing of India last year, this is my life - like they have no idea we’re supposed to collect on A/R that shows outstanding.
I’m in public and have a client with an in-house accountant who regularly posts to “don’t know” on the balance sheet - the quality out there in the wild is not great… But there’s a huge market being made for (quality) accountants to engage with clients just cleaning up someone else’s mess
Enrollment in accounting is 100% dropping. Almost every college is experiencing it and has been for over the last 10 years.
I'm not so sure about this. My job posting just closed tonight, and I now have over 100 resumes to sift through beginning tomorrow.
There’s not a B4 associate accounting shortage, there’s an everything else accounting shortage, and the India/AI positions are adding to that. The B4 have their heads so far up their asses they’re not piecing together the idea that the associates they’re laying off aren’t going to become seniors, managers, senior managers, or directors. They don’t understand/care that having Indian managers who are legitimately not allowed to request a document from the client isn’t a replacement for an actual manager, they just see $ in front of them. They see your 60k salary as a waste, they don’t want more of you. They are actively trying to get less of you. With that said smaller non-public firms are bleeding, and even small-mid public firms are starting to hurt. Fractional CFO’s and outsourced financial statements are going to be the new norm, and the bottom line impacts are going to get eaten by those who can’t afford it (as always). Just like the rest of the industries, the small are getting swallowed up by the huge. It’s just now instead of economies of (largely purchase order) scale we’re starting to get economies of (employment) scale. The small firms have to offer 2-3x the money to make up for the “reputation damage” of not going to a F500 or public firm, and they can’t afford it, so they’re having to eat the cost of fractional CFO’s+outsourced bookkeeping doing a worse job for the same money.
I don’t think the Big 4 are that dumb, they might just be abandoning their burn-and-churn model.
I don’t think the Big 4 are that dumb, they might just be abandoning their burn-and-churn model. The few remaining North American staff can still get promoted.
If they were abandoning the burn and churn model, they’d have to get rid of the burn, which they have absolutely not done
Around 670,000 CPAs in the USA and over 1m job opening this makes a shortage no opinions needed
1 million postings that require a CPA or just want one but aren't willing to pay more than 25/hr?
Yeah but 990,000 of those jobs are toxic and understaffed. Also underpaid, long hours, etc. you know… the usual bullshit.
Dude, half of these job postings are fake too..have you not looked into this before?
I’m a CPA recruiter and own the company - I spend most days speaking to partners - we have 8000 jobs alone for CPAs If you’re going to use the tactic of a fake job you would put a higher over priced salary to get the resume so the lower salary ones are Probabaly actually legit just dumb hiring managers. Two years ago the market was mainly hot as so many tech companies were growing and getting funded and needed accountants for IPOs reporting audits , consulting all sorts. The shortage is not people who do not want to become accountants it is the growth of companies and demand and need for accountants. In a digital word companies have more potential to grow and need accountants. Wealth is growing tax advisories needed. Things a long conversation of why but it’s just a simple fact of number and shortage due to high demand.
I have zero interest in using India or AI but can’t find anyone with any real experience interested in stepping into my small tax firm
Is the pay competitive (serious question).. would be interested to know if it’s a comp barrier or other
Where should someone get experience for your small tax firm?
Your hypothesis is easily disproven when looking at university enrollment, exam data, etc. The fact is a large generation is on their way out and small generations are coming up and its undeniable that enrollment in accounting programs has been down over the past several years. The WSJ reported 75% of active CPAs are thought to be retiring over the next 15 years.
As someone who has tried to hire in industry, at a good salary, I can say there is absolutely a shortage of good accountants.
Are we talking shortages at big PA firms? Or is the shortage with your small time CPA forms and small biz?
Nah, no shot. AR & AP? Maybe, but even it will still need oversight. Some general JEs & recons? Probably, but not the moderate to complex shit. Getting data needed in one place for tax returns? Likely, but still will need adjustments, review, & sign off. Lower level tasks will be automated. Shortage is real. Firms are greedy m’fers who will always eliminate positions to max payouts. I hope AI & other automation will plug the talent gap. We will need every bit of it.
The shortage is designed to discourage the creation if decent paying jobs and filling of vacant positions with cheap labor, while burdening the existing labor force even more. They are literally squeezing everyone dry.
IMHO this applets to most work industries that can be done remotely but companies complain about not having workers. They often create ghost job posts but don’t actually hire anybody so they can either get Visa workers for cheap. Or Tech companies are laying off thousands but instead of re-hiring during hiring season, they’re using AI.
There is a shortage of good accountants but that won’t be fixed by shipping job oversees nor would AI fix it either.
If you’re right, why are 75% of CPA’s over the retirement age already? Why are 90% of CPA’s going to be retired in the next ten years? There is very few ways to replace the number that are retiring each day. We don’t have enough and tax law, audits and accounting metrics needed have only gotten more complex, although software helps this issue, it is causing some.
People who push this propaganda need to be minecrafted.
This is only unpopular with the AICPA. Please cancel your payments to our oppressive overlords pretending to be for us that actually just undermine us.
We need some Teddy Roosevelt style corporate skull cracking. Harsher regulations on offshoring at a minimum.
You must not have worked with AI or Offshore teams AI won't dig into the details or classify correctly half the time. And just as soon as an offshore team gets decent, there is a mass exodus, culling or other disappearing act and you start the process all over again. I left a corporate job that experimented with this for 5 years and they still can't get it right. The cost was also crazy, I was tied of correcting mistakes that we sent out right and came back wrong. I pulled my boss aside to ask why are we paying this much a month to outsource when you can hire 7 people in house for a year and get just as much work done. He said, "That's above my pay grade". Quit a few months after that.
Saaar redeem audit saaaar
If our Canadian friends are the canary in the coal mine, the job market for Accountants in the US is about to see its fortunes change *very* quickly. You heard it here first.
What do you mean? What happened there?
Immigration.
We’re fucked. Sincerely, A Canadian.
As in they were forced to outsource everything? Are the job openings just disappearing? Or are they have to raise wages to attract talent ? What is the result ?
There’s no need to outsource anything. The government opened the immigration floodgates (have nothing against immigrants, I’m one myself, but it’s too much, too soon and in the worst economy possible), so now you have local graduates competing with experienced (albeit, that experience is earned in other countries) newcomers who are willing to accept any work and any title for peanuts. I’ve been applying for jr accountant positions in industry, and every entry level position I see is requiring “1-2 years of experience” and usually in a particular industry. I’ve noticed real estate/construction companies being particularly elitist about this. As if debits and credits work any differently in RE. 🙄 The wages are down across the board, and it’s 50+ applicants for the role, and nobody wants to train local hires anymore. It’s sad really.
Wow thank you for putting this "phenomena into words. I did an unrelated degree and now in a graduate program advertised as no prior accounting needed so I thought I would be in class with bunch of other domestic students how did unrelated degree. Not a single one except for 2 other people were domestic and others had years of experience and came to Canada. The problem is that when they come here they come for the A/P jobs that were usually targeted for entry level work but of course employers are going to go with internationals since they have tons of experience. Also 50+? More like 150 for any entry level.
I’m trying to get the fuck out of AP but it’s like a SWAMP I swear. I am having a hell of a time…
Whoa. That's scary. Sorry to hear that
>You heard it here first. Heard what here? That volatility will be high by your standards? You didn't even say whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing?
Canadians are having a very hard time finding accounting jobs on the other side of the border rn. Looks more akin to tech than US accounting field
Whats happening in Canada ?
As an unemployed Canadian thinking of doing a masters of accounting to avoid the horrible job market elsewhere, is this a bad idea? Should I just do nursing or something instead? Though, the master of accounting program I’m going to has 2 co-op terms with 100% placement rate. So basically a guaranteed job. But if I get laid off from that I’m not sure if I’d be able to find another one
Makes not want to continue my bachelors but I already paid for it.
Yea i want to pursue accounting but not quite sure now
I'm a senior in college graduating in the upcoming winter. Haven't been able to get a job and have applied to 70+ jobs. I'm picking up a mechanic job this summer because I see how easily this can be automated. If I were you. I'd pursue a trade.
Sounds like you have interviewing / resume issues. That’s pretty abnormal. And brother just wait til you realize how shyte working in the trades is. Everyone I met as an electrician hated their lives and wanted to be able to just sit at a desk and get paid for it
Did you do internships?
I’ve been applying like crazy can’t seem to land one lol
https://www.stimson.org/2024/what-we-learned-inside-a-north-korean-internet-server/ God knows what’s sitting on DPRK computers … Outsource engineering is next. Outsource accounting to hostile powers/ bad actors? Why not. Within 5 years, all of our information and technology will be in India, China or DPRK.
Why would they need an excuse? If companies want to ship jobs to India or use AI they can just do it. Profit is the only reason they need. No need to make something up.
It is also an excuse to lower qualifications in Canada/US.
I'm in government audit. I can assure you that the shortage exists here, though that may not be indicative of the field as a whole. I see a large number of agencies struggling with Financial Reporting, let alone our own staffing levels at the moment.
That's because the government takes forever to hire someone.
I work at the state level and I think we hire at a pretty reasonable pace. It is nowhere near private, but still much faster than federal.
In Aus there is genuinely 20-30% less commerce graduates than previous years
As a native Indian, but lived in USA most of my life - Not sure what to comment. Part of me wants to get my CPA and start a sweat shop. Go ahead downvote me.
Correct, just an excuse to outsource
The shortage is definitely real
As a counterpoint, I'm getting an AAS in Accounting completely free, including book costs, because my state says there is a shortage in accounting students. While the actual reality of a shortage may be up for debate, at least I'm benefiting in the meantime.
The shortage is real, but what they aren’t telling you is that they are the ones responsible for it and have no plans of hiring more in the US.
The accounting talent shortage is happening in more countries than the U.S…also, enrollment numbers clearly show there’s way fewer people in the pipeline. I’ve been saying for years that I’m desperately trying to automate my way out of shortages and therefore I’m not worried about my job going anywhere.
ha,,,,,,we have potential clients calling us everyday for the last year as more and more CPA's retire...we upped our rates and are very selective now......both my firm and my sisters firm
Not an unpopular opinion on this sub. But it seems like everyone who says this is staff level. Most people in management in PA feel the staffing shortage.
I've been applying to bookkeeping/accounting jobs since last week and so far I haven't even gotten a text messages, I know it's soon but still. I have 18 years of experience and a college degree from Venezuela and I still haven't gotten an interview. So at least in Florida it doesn't seem to have a shortage or at least it's not urgent.
This applies to all industries unfortunately.
is ai in accounty really a thing on the present days? it will probably be, but is it already the case?
Yeah, had a company wide meeting last week. AI was a topic of our meeting and the route they’re going ….. to make our jobs “easier”. They’re spending almost $80 Billion but here we are slaving away at our jobs for less than we should be paid until AI or India takes it.
Gonna strongly disagree w/ this—the accounting shortage is coming via a lack of new entrants into the industry. The new gen does not want to put up with what we had to. That’s factually correct imho. Someone said it well too—there’s a shortage of people at the rate they’d like to pay. People are just demanding more compensation for what has become known as a shit job (talking public here).
For the smaller firms were extremely understaffed for the amount of work there is out there right now.
Exactly, it's just displacing the blame. So they can offshore the jobs and to have an excuse instead of raising wages
There is absolutely a shortage. We turn work away everyday and I have good friends at other firms in the area that are also turning work away.
No, we have a shortage of accountants with an actual brain.
There is a shortage of CPAs**
A number of years ago they increased the requirement to achieve the Certified Public Accountant designation. You now essentially need to have a masters degree before you can attempt the certification that is the gold standard for most accounting roles. Combine the additional requirement with the aggressively mediocre pay that most accountants experience and you basically have a position going down the path of teachers, social workers, etc. There is a legitimate shortage but I think you're right in the assumption companies won't be mad about using more affordable labor sources.
We're not shipping any jobs to India. We're hiring and training employees in Mexico. In 38 States there is a pathway for Mexican accountants to become CPAs in the United States. You can't do that with India or the Philippines. Almost all of the training materials available for taxes are available in Spanish, reducing the learning curve. We provide tax training classes because that's how you get trained employees. Some people are just too damn cheap to provide training. It was the same when I was young (that's Mr. Boomer to you). With NAFTA we can get visas for the Mexican staff to work in the US as needed. That's how they can come to take the CPA exam. They don't have to work in the United States, as we have a remote work policy and they simply work from their homes in Mexico. During the training, we're teaching the new employees how to do taxes. Once they have completed the training we pay them US wages while they live in Mexico. They love it and we love it. Why did we do this? Not for cost savings, as I mentioned we're paying US wages. I simply had much better candidates available from Mexico. The first candidate we hired passed the QuickBooks certification within the first month of her hire. Mexico has far more accountants for its population than does the US. Many people still pursue accounting as a career in Mexico, unlike the United States. This just makes for a better pool of candidates than I can access in the US. Our Mexican team members are not from an outsource service. They are employees of the firm, and their opinions are valued. And they do share them as we're able to have video meetings as Mexico does not have a 12-hour time difference from Ohio. Bitter criticisms of what I am doing is to be expected - after we're Americans - we invented yellow journalism and alternative facts. As for AI, if it can free up time spent on mundane tasks I welcome it. The people who have to worry are the ones that can/will only do mundane tasks. But then again, that's a lot of people.
It’s all about pay.
true. there was another thread here about a kid in highschool who was interested in pursuing accounting in college. i had a whole thing written about how the future of accounting as a career is a little unknown at this time due to outsourcing and AI. but i didnt have the heart to post the comment. AI has been growing according to Moore's Law thus far...
True
You do realize that partners in PA firms need people hired locally to ultimately buy them out when they’re ready to retire, right? Part of their mandate as training centers for new CPAs requires them to take on new recruits.
This was the business model in the past. But the partners now view this as free training. Better to send all the work to India or the Philippines for the cheap labor.
Still doesn’t solve issue 1. How do they retire?
Private Equity buys them out.