What If the Staffing Shortage Is Just a Myth?
Maybe the world just doen’t need as many accountants as we’ve thought?
By CPA Trendlines Research
salary
Salary and Compensation Outlook for Small CPA Firms 2025
Cornerstone Report: CPA Trendlines projects significant increases in 2025 compensation for professionals and matching expansions of payroll costs at small CPA firms. But partners and owners could get even bigger earnings gains.
Battling the Staffing Crisis: Is a Little-Known, But Controversial, Visa Program the Answer for 2025 Hiring?
Is the H-1B foreign worker program a cure for the staffing shortage?
What it is. How it works. And what CPA firms are doing with it.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Six Tips for Setting Compensation
Plus 17 extraordinary benefits to consider offering.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset
“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it, you almost don’t have to manage them.” – Jack Welch
“Pay your people the least possible and you’ll get from them the same.” – Malcolm Forbes
Every CPA industry survey we’ve seen for decades shows that compensation is either No. 1 in importance to staff or close to it.
MORE: Staff Crave Advancement and Challenge | What Leadership Looks and Feels at CPA Firms | Eleven Things That Good Mentors Do | Give the Recognition Your Staff Needs | The Importance of Great Bosses | How Remote Work Is Impacting Accounting Firms | Make Work Flexibility Work for Everyone | Why Staff Leave CPA Firms … and How to Stop Them | How to Solve the Big Disconnect in Talent Management | What Relevance Means for Staffing in Accounting | How Accounting Staffing Has Changed
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Our feeling is that compensation is the ante to enter or stay in the game. Put another way, according to Jeremy Wortman:
If college graduates are looking for their first job, or if a young person with a little experience is job hunting, compensation is huge. If a person has two offers, one for $60,000 and the other for $65,000, the higher offer will get the person almost every time. But if the offers are $500 apart and the person likes the firm offering the lower salary better, it’s likely that the lower-paying firm will get the nod.
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How Accounting Firms Are Handling the Staff Shortage
Some creativity may be in order.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Rare is the CPA firm that has no problem finding, hiring and retaining professionals in accountancy. Those that don’t have a problem are either not hiring or are paying plenty with packages that include higher than average salaries, the option to work remotely, stock option plans and other benefits.
MORE: The Future of Fees | As Private Equity Closes In, Firms Seek New Answers to Staffing Problems | When Staffing Falls Short, Clients Get Culled | How Accounting Firms Are Dealing with Retirement | Next Five Years Are Critical for Accounting Firms | Staffing Turnover’s Down, But Why? | What’s Your Firm Worth? Private Equity Wants to Know | The New Pipeline: Outsourcing and Offshoring | Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?
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Several of the top-notch consultants who contributed observations to The 2024 Rosenberg National Survey of CPA Firm Statistics not only noted the problem but shared some of the solutions that firms are applying.
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