salary

Is Tech Causing Both CPA Shortage and Low Salaries?

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dot chart
The number of accounting degree completions from bachelor’s programs from 1994-2021. Source: 2023 AICPA Trends Report

 

There’s a paradox going on.

By CPA Trendlines Research

A working paper by three academics presents a paradoxical contradiction in the accounting industry. Somehow, technology, which is starting to replace some accounting functions, is causing a shortage of accounting professionals. And despite the high demand for the few graduates who major in accounting, starting salaries are lower than in related professions.

MORE: Audit Firms Nervous about New Tech | What Accountants Can Learn from T-Ball | Staffing Tops List of Woes at CPA Firms | To Replenish the Talent Pipeline, Go Back to the Classroom | Beware the Work-Life/Workload Doom Spiral | Why the Dry Pipeline? It’s About Time | Business Model Transformation: Do It or Die | Misperceptions, Corrections, Accountancy and Lemonade | Whole Person Retention: When It’s Not Just the Money | Global Trends Show Many Dissatisfied CPAs | More Big Firms Shut Their Doors to New College Grads
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And in a related paradox, technology’s most powerful tools may be augmenting the accountant’s workload.

How can all this be concurrent?
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Beware the Work-Life/Workload Doom Spiral

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man on spiral staircase

Five strategies for keeping your firm out of it.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Is your firm in a doom spiral?

MORE: Business Model Transformation: Do It or Die | Misperceptions, Corrections, Accountancy and Lemonade | Whole Person Retention: When It’s Not Just the Money | Global Trends Show Many Dissatisfied CPAs | More Big Firms Shut Their Doors to New College Grads | Seven Enticements to Keep Talent On Board | Employee Retention Is Easier Than Attraction | Let Interns Fix the Staffing Shortage? | Disruptors: Talent Crisis? What Talent Crisis? | Three Ways to Raise the Bar for Your Business | Accountants’ Advice: Be Careful, Quick, Creative … and Lean
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Here’s what it looks like:

  1. A CPA quits or retires.
  2. The firm can’t attract a replacement.
  3. The firmwide workload remains constant.
  4. Increased workloads get redistributed.
  5. A CPA quits because of stress.
  6. Workloads increase again.
  7. Someone else quits. No one gets hired.
  8. The firm turns away clients.
  9. Revenue drops. Salaries stagnate.
  10. Uncompetitive salaries hinder hiring.
  11. A CPA quits or retires.
  12. Repeat.

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Seven Enticements to Keep Talent On Board

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More than 85% of those surveyed who have a high desire to stay in public accounting responded that their firm actively
supports their career development.

 

Time is a concern, and so is performance.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The pipeline of incoming accounting professionals isn’t exactly gushing these days. To the contrary, it has slowed to an inadequate dribble.

The scarcity of qualified professionals makes talent retention more important than ever. It’s far easier and less costly to keep current people on board than to attract and onboard new people.

MORE: Employee Retention Is Easier Than Attraction | Let Interns Fix the Staffing Shortage? | Disruptors: Talent Crisis? What Talent Crisis? | Seven Steps to a Stronger Future | Firms Culling Clients as Staffing Woes Persist | Compensation’s Up, but Up Enough to Retain Staff?
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But what do they want? What keeps them happily at their current job?

Well, for one thing, money.

But these days, that’s not enough.
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Disruptors: Chase Birky Builds the Anti-CPA Firm

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Don’t reinvent the wheel. Join a better wheel. 

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).


The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Chase Birky wanted “a better way to CPA,” so he and co-founder Max Fritz created Dark Horse – the “anti-CPA firm,” which would be “the opposite of what a client would expect of a CPA firm, of what talent expects of a CPA firm.” Dark Horse democratizes access to the resources, tools, and technology available to larger firms so sole practitioners and small firms have an easier path to the modern CPA firm.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

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Dark Horse was born out of the realization that small businesses were underserved by their accountants. Many small business owners have “these horror stories about the large firm that deprioritizes them and charges them an arm and a leg, or the one-off practitioner or micro firm that wouldn’t return their emails or phone calls, and never provides advice, just tells them to sign on the dotted line,” Birky says.

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Employee Retention Is Easier Than Attraction

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four people seated around table

Five conclusions from a new report.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The accounting talent pipeline problem isn’t going away. It isn’t even improving.

But it isn’t hopeless.

MORE: Let Interns Fix the Staffing Shortage? | Disruptors: Talent Crisis? What Talent Crisis? | 3 Ways to Raise the Bar for Your Business | Accountants’ Advice: Be Careful, Quick, Creative … and Lean | Seven Steps to a Stronger Future | Accountants Bullish Locally, Bearish Nationally | Top Performers Lead in Leverage, Culling, Outsourcing | Auditing Standards ‘Yellow Book’ Updated | Firms Culling Clients as Staffing Woes Persist | Revenue Up at 59% of Accounting Firms … and More Good News | Compensation’s Up, but Up Enough to Retain Staff?
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A recent report from the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs points out that, though the problem is big and the obstacles many, CPA firms can, with enough effort, hold on to the talent they’ve got.

And retaining talent is a lot less expensive than trying to attract it.
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