Just weeks after the profession got in a tizzy about private equity-owned firms telling staff to remove CPA from their email signatures and, in some cases, LinkedIn profiles, INSIDE Public Accounting has dropped figures on the average number of staff with CPAs at the hundreds of public accounting firms that report their data to IPA. Ready?
Between 2020 and 2024, the average percentage of staff holding CPA licenses across all firms dropped from 56.0 percent to 48.4 percent. This decline has occurred across all firm sizes, suggesting a systemic shift in both hiring practices and credentialing trends. Larger firms, which tend to offer a broader array of advisory and consulting services, report even lower CPA ratios, with only 41.5 percent of staff holding licenses in 2024.
Before we grab the pitchforks (they’re still cooling off from the last round of outrage, let’s give them a break), as IPA points out it’s worth recognizing that many firms have greatly expanded their offerings to areas that don’t necessarily require a CPA, like CAS. There’s an argument to be made about how the success of these offerings could be built on the trustworthiness and expertise of CPA holders providing these services but we don’t need to get into that today. If we want to be generous we could also suggest that part of this is firms adapting to declining CPA numbers and finding other ways to get their billable hours.
This trend is nothing new. Way back in 2019, the AICPA Trends report released that year stated that 31% of new hires at public accounting firms were non-accounting graduates, an increase of 11 percentage points from 2016 to 2018. By 2021, that number had increased to 42.7%. Unfortunately we aren’t able to say if that trend continued as the AICPA stated in its 2023 report that they were unable to accurately project the number of graduates hired into public accounting in 2021 “due to a limited response rate from public accounting firms.” If we had to spitball, we’d guess the number of non-accounting graduates hired at public accounting firms in recent years has easily topped half or more. Probably even higher than that in the two years since AI became the only thing anyone talks about.
Imagine trying to tell someone from the 90s that by the 2020s less than half of staff at CPA firms will be CPAs oh and also private equity and venture capital will be climbing all over themselves to get a piece of the business. They’d think you’re nuts.
