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Talent Management

Courtney Vien

cfobrew.com

New data from the AICPA suggests it may be a few years before the supply of new accounting graduates catches up with the demand.

Public accounting firms express a great desire to hire accounting grads, according to the AICPA’s biannual 

, which tracks enrollment and graduation rates as well as hiring trends in accounting. Three-quarters of the firms surveyed that hired in 2024 said they planned to hire the same (47%) or more (28%) staff this year. And 75% of those firms’ new hires held accounting degrees.

The AICPA wasn’t able to estimate the total number of new grad hires last year with confidence due to “a low response rate by firms,” it said in a press release.

Firms may struggle to meet their hiring goals. Accounting bachelor’s degree graduates dropped by 3.3% in 2023–24, the last school year that the Trends survey tracked. The decline was smaller than in previous years. The number of accounting bachelor’s grads fell by 7.8% between 2020–21 and 2021–22.

In a few years, though, and if trends hold, those numbers may tick back up. In the 2024–25 school year, accounting enrollments saw two semesters of 

The encouraging numbers may reflect the profession’s attempts to 

, Jan Taylor, the AICPA’s academic-in-residence, said in a press release. “We’ve seen an increase in entry-level pay, more objective narratives about opportunities in the profession, and a renewed commitment to reduce some of the costs and administrative hurdles to becoming a CPA,” she said. (Is that mention of “administrative hurdles” a reference to the decline of the 

In 2023, the number of people taking the CPA exam surged to 42,626, a high not seen since 2016. But in 2024, the number of exam candidates dropped by more than a third (34%). As much as we’d like to tell you that accounting went viral in ’23, the reason’s more mundane: The AICPA rolled out 

 to the CPA exam in 2024. Exam takers were required to prove competency in the core areas of audit, tax, and technology, plus one additional competency. Candidates rushed to take the “old” exam in the year before the changes were implemented—as has happened with previous rounds of changes to the test—and fewer showed up to sit for the “new” exam the first year it came out.

Demand for accounting grads still outstrips supply

The number of accounting grads dropped by 3.3% in the 2023–24 school year. 

AI isn’t coming for your job—at least, not any time soon.

That’s according to a new study by the Yale Budget Lab (YBL), which found that the labor market 

 by generative AI. YBL researchers examined occupational mix, or the percentage of workers who lost, gained, or changed jobs. They compared the rate of change in occupational mix since November 2022, when LLMs first became big news, with two other periods of technological upheaval: the advent of computers, and the internet. They found that GenAI has only had a 1% greater effect on occupational mix than the first few years of internet adoption.

“The potential effects of AI on the labor market so far are not out of the ordinary,” the researchers wrote, noting that technological disruption usually takes place on a timeline of decades, not months or years.

Some sectors have seen bigger changes in occupational mix than others since GenAI got big, the researchers observed—particularly information, financial activities, and professional and business services. However, they note that occupational mix changes in these sectors began before GenAI became popular, and that “the large shifts in the information industry” in particular “seem to be a feature of the industry itself.”

Occupational mix has also stayed steady across industries regardless of whether they have high, medium, or low 

, or whether they have high or low AI usage, the researchers found.

They did see some changes in occupational mix for 

 (aged 20–24) over the past few months compared with the 25–34 age group. GenAI may indeed be affecting new grads’ job prospects, they wrote, but a slowdown in hiring might also be to blame.

While the researchers think GenAI has the potential to become a “transformative, general purpose technolog[y],” so far, its effects on the labor market are “largely speculative.”

In other words, even if LLMs do wind up being the “next internet,” take a deep breath. You’ve got time to adapt.

Close up of a briefcase with AI abstract connected lines displayed over the key lock.

AI’s changes to the labor market may be slow in coming

Its jobs impact so far has been modest, not revolutionary.

Natasha Piñon

Activity in the US service sector halted as new orders slowed in September, the Institute for Supply Management 

Employment in the service sector also remains “in contraction territory, thanks to a combination of delayed hiring efforts and difficulty finding qualified staff,” Steve Miller, chair of the services business survey committee at the ISM, said in a statement.

“Ten [service] industries reported growth in September, two fewer than in August,” the report noted. Seven industries contracted for the month, including mining, construction, and retail trade. That was an increase from four industries in contraction the month before.

Additionally, the survey revealed that prices paid by service orgs for materials and inputs increased “for the 100th consecutive month,” also marking “the index’s second-highest [reading] since October 2022.”

The ISM survey offers some much-needed insight into at least one aspect of the labor market after the US government shutdown 

 of September’s jobs numbers, which might not be released until the government opens again. The withheld employment report marked the first time since 2013 that the data wasn’t available, 

, complicating the decision-making process for economists, businesses, and the central bank.

“There’s no question—the best jobs data in the world comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee 

 last week. “We need that data, we want that data.”

And not having that data poses its own problems. “In this environment, the risk of slower growth stems from reduced visibility into the economy in an already uncertain period, and less so from the shutdown itself,” Mike Reid, Carrie Freestone, and Imri Haggin, RBC economists, wrote in a 

This piece has been updated to note that Austan Goolsbee spoke with CNBC, not CFO Dive.

Service industry labor market weakens 

The new data offers some much-needed insight into at least one aspect of the labor market after the delayed release of September’s jobs numbers. 

Jesse Klein

Corporate all-hands meetings will probably have a slide about employer health insurance this year, because health insurance costs are going to be a hot topic. Get ready, because employers—and employees—will have to figure out how to cover a cost spike.

Employer coverage is expected to increase an average of 9.2% to 9.5% in 2026, the biggest increase in 15 years, according to the 

 on employers. The rising costs are attributable to lingering inflation, as hospitals ask for higher prices; the 

; and the need for more healthcare services, as rates of cancer, cardiovascular problems, and musculo-skeletal issues climb among working age people, according to the Journal.

Aging workers are also staying in jobs longer and accessing more telemedicine, which is all adding to ballooning medical care costs, the 

. And of course we can’t forget tariffs, which are affecting prices of medical devices, supplies, and drugs.

“This is the worst I’ve seen,” Pam Kehaly, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, told The Wall Street Journal about the rising healthcare costs.

Employers are looking at alternatives to cut costs and avoid pushing rate hikes onto employees. A WTW survey provided to the Wall Street Journal found that 60% of large employers were considering switching health insurers, and a third were thinking of finagling new plans with limited access to providers to cut down costs.

But some will still choose to push the costs onto employees “through larger payroll deductions for premiums or higher out-of-pocket charges such as deductibles,” per the WSJ. 

Those all-hands are going to be a lot of fun, for sure.

Health insurance costs face largest rate hike in 15 years

After three years of health insurance costs increasing, this year…they will also increase.

No one likes it when a teacher pulls out a red pen. Revisions are rarely 

 to jobs numbers, we have a feeling the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t a fan of the red pen either.

 than initially reported in 2024 and early 2025, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday, fueling concerns that the once seemingly sturdy job market has harbored deeper cracks than we previously realized.

Annual revisions to payroll data demonstrated a 911,000 drop from previous estimates. That’s a decrease of over 50% from the 1.79 million total jobs the BLS previously reported.

The leisure and hospitality sector was especially hard-hit by the revisions, subtracting 176,000 jobs from initial estimates. Professional and business services, as well as retail, were also revised down significantly. Ultimately, most sectors, with the exception of transportation, warehousing, and utilities, were downwardly revised.

The corrections arrive as part of the BLS’s annual benchmark review of jobs numbers. The BLS historically updates the figures using more comprehensive data from state unemployment tax filings, which take longer than the business surveys it initially uses for jobs numbers.

A full revision, which economists expect to be less negative, will arrive in February, per the 

. But if the corrections hold, they would mark the largest annual revision to jobs data to date, 

Job growth in the US through March was lower than previously reported 

The revised data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics fuels concerns about a weakening labor market.  

How prepared are new accountants to enter the workforce? Depends on who you ask.

Early-career accountants tend to think their skills are pretty solid, according to a 

 by the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS). Their managers, you may be surprised to hear, don’t exactly agree.

ICPAS surveyed 185 staff with five years’ experience or less in accounting and finance, and 285 managers who supervised early-career accounting and finance staff. Across a set of 37 skills, early-career accountants rated themselves an average of 7.39, on a 10-point scale. But the managers gave the new accountants an average of just 4.95 across the board. On every single skill, new accountants rated themselves higher than managers did.

Managers felt that newer hires were weakest in areas related to critical thinking and initiative. They gave them particularly low marks on topics such as making decisions independently under pressure (3.96 rating) or without explicit instructions (4.08), finding answers (4.6) and knowing when to ask for help versus researching on their own (4.13), and drawing conclusions from data (4.37).

But are early-career staff getting the support they need to increase their skills? Here, ICPAS uncovered another perception gap: Managers were far more likely than early-career staff to say they gave feedback on every topic ICPAS asked about. For instance, 59% of managers said they discussed “taking initiative or problem solving” with employees. Only 21% of early-career staff said they’d gotten feedback in that area. Four in ten said they gave feedback on “professionalism or workplace etiquette.” Just 8% of staff agreed.

Accountants might be suffering from a failure to communicate. But managers do seem to understand what entry-level staff are going through. In interviews with ICPAS, they said that new hires face higher expectations than they themselves did, and that new staff are given less of a grace period for getting up to speed. Soft skills, the managers said, are now being prioritized alongside technical skills such as Excel proficiency.

Accounting managers see more of a skills gap than new hires do 

But managers may not be giving them the feedback they need.

Gee, what a strange, random coincidence: When industries go all-in on AI adoption, people might lose their jobs because of it.

The US “may be witnessing the early stages of AI-driven job displacement,” according to 

 published at the end of August by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Fed researchers were interested in the sharp slowdown of the labor market in July’s jobs report, and, more broadly, they wondered to what degree “widespread deployment of large language models” was contributing to rising unemployment.

Perhaps you remember that particular jobs report: That’s the one that inspired President Trump to take the 

 of firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s commissioner hours after the July results were released. July wasn’t a blip, though: August’s jobs report was 

So, where does AI factor in? To determine which industries had the highest AI prevalence, Fed researchers analyzed more than 19,000 tasks from the Department of Labor’s O*NET database, which lists occupational characteristics and worker requirements, and determined “whether LLMs could reduce task completion time by at least 50%,” ultimately aggregating results “at the occupational level to create comprehensive AI exposure scores.”

They also looked at “real-world uptake patterns” from the Real-Time Population Survey “in which workers reported the intensity of their actual generative AI usage and time savings.”

Either way you slice it—theoretical or actual AI usage—researchers found “both measures reveal a striking correlation between AI’s prevalence and unemployment increases since 2022.”

Take it all with a grain of salt: The report’s authors were careful to stress that their findings “represent correlation, not causation,” considering that many factors, from 

 to monetary policy, could be driving “rising unemployment in AI-exposed occupations.”

Between 2022 and 2025, occupations with higher AI exposure saw a higher unemployment rate.

“Computer and mathematical occupations—predictably among the most AI-exposed, with a score around 80%—saw some of the steepest unemployment rises,” the report noted. “Meanwhile, blue-collar jobs and personal service roles, which have limited AI applicability, experienced relatively smaller increases.”

Industries with high AI adoption similarly “showed the largest unemployment gains” in that time period. “Again, computer and mathematical occupations, which adopted these technologies most heavily, experienced substantial unemployment increases,” the report’s authors said.

“These patterns are particularly striking in technology sectors, where workers might expect AI to augment rather than to replace their roles,” they continued. “Unlike previous technological revolutions that primarily affected manufacturing or routine clerical work, generative AI can target cognitive tasks performed by knowledge workers—traditionally among the most secure employment categories.”

All the while, the researchers noted that because AI is such a new technology, potential longer-term benefits that could offset job displacement, like creating new jobs and industries, are currently unknown.

“If current trends continue, new approaches to workforce development, social safety nets and economic support for displaced workers may merit greater consideration,” the researchers said. “As we navigate this technological revolution, understanding potential early warning signs could prove crucial for protecting US workers and maintaining economic stability.”