Tax and Accounting Pay Advancing at 5.9% Pace

Payroll services hours take some wild swings.

By Beth Bellor

What would help recruit more people to the accounting profession? How about that trusty standby, more money?

Most accountants are bringing home more in hourly earnings, according to the latest available data.

MORE on JOBS: What an A.I.-Powered Workforce Means for Accountants | New Businesses Mean New Business | Accounting Jobs Up 4% for Year |

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For the accounting profession overall, hourly earnings hit a new high at $41.39, up 35 cents or 0.9 percent for the month and $2.32 or 5.9 percent for the year. Staff earnings hit a new top mark at $31.76, up 20 cents or 0.6 percent for the month and $1.64 or 5.4 percent for the year.
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Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow

We need the machines to do as much of this as we can.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

When Scott Scarano lost a few good people at his firm, he had an epiphany that he needed to change things. Instead of continuing to grow for the sake of growth, he overhauled his management approach.

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“And things are better now at the firm, because we’re not focused on growth,” but instead on “growing everybody,” including himself, Scarano said. By building better habits and finding better ways to do things, his team is growing its bottom line, and a few of the people who left earlier have now returned. “That’s the growth I like to see.” READ MORE →

How Auditors Can Beat AI

Ignore the coming tsunami of change at your own peril.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Instant download:
The New Manifesto for Accountants.

The other day, I picked up a college textbook on auditing from 2001.

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Even back then, that book listed these as “critical forces on the profession:”

  • Increasing market saturation with relatively little opportunity for growth
  • Perceptions that financial statement audits have become a commodity
  • Price competition and continual pressure to reduce fees
  • Cost pressures that have resulted in the reduction of time devoted to engagements
  • Perceptions that the incidence and severity of alleged audit failures have increased

In the 20-plus years since that book was published, not much has changed. Today many of the college students who learned auditing from that textbook are in leadership positions at audit firms. They were warned about what we were up against.

That we are still facing those same “critical forces,” which have only exacerbated since then, is an indicator of the ossified state of leadership in the audit profession.

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AI Is Not Your Enemy

Clients still need context, and that comes from you.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

In 1994, in a small hotel meeting room in Colorado Springs, 50 accounting firms were up in arms when the presenter mentioned QuickBooks. They shouted angry comments: “QuickBooks is destroying my business.” “They want to take my clients.” “They are giving people a false sense of security with their commercials that say, ‘If you can write a check, you can do QuickBooks.’”

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The presenter was nervous and asked me what he was to do. I said I use QuickBooks for your company, and I have no idea what I am doing, and I could use an accountant to teach me.
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ChatGPT Passes CPA Exam on Second Try

Its average score was 85.1.

By Rick Richardson
Technology This Week

An improved and better-trained version of ChatGPT took a simulated CPA test after an earlier failure and passed, similar to the roughly half of human applicants who fail on their first attempt. But does this trial suggest that ChatGPT will soon compete for accounting positions?

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“This calls into question the ‘competitive advantage’ of the human accountant relative to the machine. To our knowledge, for the first time, AI has performed as well as most human accountants on a real-world accounting task. This raises important questions of how machines and accountants will work together in the future,” the study’s authors said.
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Accounting Jobs Up 4% for Year

Payroll services up over 7 percent.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research

Employment in the accounting profession continues to climb, according to the most recent federal jobs data. New highs were set in

  • employment overall and for staff, CPA firm staff, payroll, payroll staff, bookkeeping and women
  • earnings overall and for staff, and for payroll staff

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Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 339,000 in May, with the unemployment rate ticking up by 0.3 percentage point to 3.7 percent. The professional and business services sector added 64,000 jobs, similar to April.
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Robert Fligel: Private Equity Shakes up M&A

Opportunity or threat? It depends.

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With Rick Telberg
For CPA Trendlines

Private equity takeovers of accounting firms are changing the rules for the CPA business, impacting succession plans, shifting talent strategies, and reshaping the competition, according to Robert Fligel, CEO and founder of RF Resources, one of the nation’s leading advisors.

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SEE ALL: Podcasts and Videos here

In this exclusive interview with CPA Trendlines, Fligel, a veteran dealmaker in the vast and active New York market, explains what PE firms may not want you to know, why CPA firms are suddenly so much in demand, and the often-uncertain outlook for owners, staffers, and the profession.

For some, PE is an opportunity. For others, a threat. Fligel helps sort it all out.

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