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NEW REPORT: The CPA Shortage Approaches a Tipping Point

Shapiro
Shapiro

How savvy CPA firms are fighting back.

By CPA Trendlines Research

A new state CPA society report on the dwindling number of college graduates who are pursuing CPA credentials underscores an issue that’s already being confronted by some forward-thinking accounting firms.

The statistics are daunting:

  • Nearly half of college accounting majors never sit for the CPA exam.
  • A third of those who take the CPA exam never complete it.
  • On average, it takes 6.5 attempts for candidates to pass all four parts.
  • Only 27 percent of test-takers finish all four parts on the first try.
  • 75 percent of current CPAs are projected to retire within the next 15 years.

Todd Shapiro, the Illinois CPA Society president and chief executive, calls the stagnating CPA pipeline “a threat that will only get worse and grow more troubling without action because there’s no slowdown in sight for accounting talent demand.”