The number of accounting grads has dropped in recent years, as students realize they can make higher starting salaries in related fields like finance. That’s contributed to a persistent and perhaps growing shortage of accountants.
Firms may have taken notice. The median starting salary for new accountants at public firms rose 11% since 2023, climbing to $60,834, according to the AICPA’s Management of an Accounting Practice (MAP) Survey.
And that’s just for new hires with bachelor’s degrees. Those with master’s degrees have seen salaries jump 17% to a median $67,750 since the last time the survey was conducted two years ago.
Whether that’s enough to lure students away from other fields remains a concern. “Higher starting salaries and more competitive pay across the board will definitely help accounting firms attract and retain more talent,” Lisa Simpson, VP of firm services at the AICPA, said in a Journal of Accountancy article. “The profession is making progress in this area, but we need to continue to evaluate pay compared to other career opportunities.”
Partners are still making bank, the survey found. Their compensation grew 10% over 2023, to a median of $202,521. Net remaining per owner, or profit per partner, rose 12% to $252,663.
The MAP survey polled 1,073 firms from May through July of this year, asking them about FY 2024 data. The majority of the firms surveyed (81%) were smaller, with net client fees (a measure of revenue) below $5 million.
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Revenues up: Firm revenues also grew over the past two years, the MAP survey found, though not as dramatically as in recent years. The median revenue growth was 6.7% in FY 2024, compared with 9.1% in FY 2022, when firms saw business pick up after the pandemic. The larger firms in the survey, with revenues over $10 million, had the most revenue growth in 2024, with a median rise of 9.1%.
Lukewarm AI adoption: Firms aren’t in a rush to adopt AI or automation. (AICPA CEO Mark Koziel called it.) Though 65% of respondents said they were open to the technologies, only 13% said they had successfully implemented them.
Firms also haven’t made robust plans for upskilling staff should routine tasks become automated. Around a quarter of firms (26%) said they’d conducted informal, occasional training to prepare staff to take on more strategic roles, and just 5% said they’d begun formal training in this area.
But if firms do adopt automation more broadly, accountants may have a pleasant surprise in store: 45% said they’d use the time savings from automation to reduce hours and improve work-life balance. John Maynard Keynes would be pleased.