Accounting used to be a career. They were long hours, but with the promise of a six-figure salary, healthy benefits, and business ownership. It was boring, but historically it was a reliable ladder to the upper middle class for those seeking its refuge.
The ghost of accounting’s past still hangs over this reputation, but it is arguably undeserved.
For years, the field of accounting has seen decreased interest among young people due to the demands of education and exams, as well as long work weeks.
The promise of a six-figure salary simply hasn’t been attractive enough to justify these efforts, especially amid concerns about the future of knowledge work.
But the ghost of the future accountant wants to talk a little.
Over the next 15 years, 75% of current certified public accountants (CPAs) are scheduled to retire. And at this rate no one will come to replace them. Instead, the industry is mortgaging its companies with the bet that AI is the only way forward.
Whether they are right or wrong, it is likely a race to the bottom.
Most white-collar professions have faced a recession following the pandemic, due in large part to overhiring during the pandemic’s stimulus and zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) mix. At the same time, leaders of so-called “knowledge work” are pushing employees to focus on “efficiency.”
The Big Four are no different. Even though they already burden employees with legal, unpaid overtime, many companies are cutting staff to the bone and hoping to fill the gaps with purpose-built artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
In this way, accounting firms are starting to look like technology companies; They used to be seen as prestigious employers, but a lack of stability and declining profits call that into question.
The number of junior positions has been drying up as companies move towards AI, a trend that can be seen in all management fields. Specifically in accounting, hiring of new graduates fell by up to 29% in recent years.
Gone are the days when a company would hire you if you had the required education and then train you. Hiring is more rigorous and expectations exist from day one.
This week, KPMG announced it would lay off 10% of its US audit partners after failing to secure enough voluntary retirements. He credited new AI auditing tools, which introduced redundancy to managers. Last month, the company cut jobs in the UK after “unusually low attrition.”
He is not alone. Over the past year, all of the big four companies have made job cuts. In the case of EY, the company has offshored a large number of support functions for “cost management.” This flies in the face of the “recession-proof” reputation that many accounting firms have earned in the past.
As if layoffs weren’t already destructive enough for morale, some companies are also cutting profits. This week, Deloitte announced it would cut benefits for several employees:
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Paid Time Off (PTO) For most employees it is being cut by 5 to 10 days.
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The company freezes its Pension Plan and does not foresee new accumulations after 2026.
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Paid Family Leave was cut in half to 8 weeks.
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The company stopped offering a $50,000 Family Planning benefit to cover the costs of IVF, adoption or surrogacy.
Honestly, none of the changes suggest that the company values employees. It also doesn’t do a great job of making the industry an attractive destination for new talent.
Technology companies are very profitable and have billions to spend on computing. Accounting firms are not the same. That’s one reason why labor-intensive companies are reducing their investments in talent and focusing more on artificial intelligence (AI).
Some of these early investments have been promising, especially on the audit front. In recent years, the big four companies have spent no less than $9 billion on internal AI development and partnerships.
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Deloitte has launched an internal “AI academy” and has started playing with agents for certain tasks.
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KPMG partnered with Microsoft to integrate Azure, OpenAI, and Copilot across the company.
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PwC partnered with OpenAI and became one of their largest enterprise customers in a short time.
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Hey is playing with an AI auditing system.
Of course, AI integration is highly dependent on talent. You have to have talent to build the tools and use them. Many of the new AI-powered tools are also new to the business and help facilitate internal tax, audit or advisory processes.
Still, it’s important to have humans on hand, as big mistakes are generally not a luxury allowed in these types of companies. Ultimately, you need competent human beings who can identify problems with technology, especially when it tends to boggle the mind.
However, integration has another objective: the scale of the companies. Honestly, this is a slippery slope.
Invest as much as you want; They may be no match for a faster, more efficient organization, especially if cost becomes a factor. This does not mean that companies will disappear soon; They still represent the gold standard for financial reporting among publicly traded companies.
However, there is a world where that changes, especially considering how laborious and bureaucratic the Big Four are. Ironically, they are playing a huge role in accelerating the decline of the entire accounting field, financially speaking.
Earlier this year, KPMG threatened to fire its own auditor if it did not pass on savings from using AI tools. He successfully pestered Grant Thornton to give him a 14% discount on those services.
If KPMG assumed it would be the only company to do such a thing, it would be sorely mistaken. If your auditor isn’t special, then it stands to reason that he isn’t special either. That’s a slippery slope for companies. It’s also completely self-inflicted, because everyone knows that the Big Four use AI.
Businesses now know that they must ask for a discount due to the use of the tools, which means that they will find themselves in the precarious position of trying to diversify their existing revenue with new tools designed specifically for this.
And if they get it wrong, they will remain labor-intensive organizations and accept making less money, even if their capital investments in technology work.
Rather than enriching or complementing existing work, these moves may simply turn the field into a race to the bottom.
Perhaps the problem is not so complicated in corporate accounting, where salaries and work-life balance are increasingly attractive to potential employees. The gravity of talent is shifting toward these more attractive jobs.
But that is a problem for public accounting. It is a problem that also affects us all. There are a finite number of quality accountants and computers still can’t do it all on their own.
It may be tempting to dream of a world in which accounting is largely done by computers, but oversight will still be necessary. Honestly, technology could increase the capabilities of existing talent, but the tools are only as good as who uses them.
The big four companies publish annual reports to assess the magnitude of the errors they missed. During the pandemic, companies made record mistakes. These have decreased in recent years, but still affect up to a fifth of audits.
Technology might help with some of this, but it certainly won’t solve these problems. Because? Well, because honestly, most bugs couldn’t be solved with an AI agent alone. The main errors have been revenue recognition (nearly a third of the errors), internal controls (more than half of the deficiencies) and other factors.
This problem has undoubtedly been exacerbated by the global shortage of top-to-bottom accounting talent. It is a problem that is getting worse and there are no signs of improvement.
Truth be told, it’s unlikely to improve much without higher salaries and better benefits. Or, more controversially, a loosening of educational requirements for accounting jobs, which is sure to be a slap in the face to many career accountants who worked hard to earn their credit hours and those three letters after their name.
This story was originally published by TheStreet on April 24, 2026, where it first appeared in the Markets section. Add TheStreet as a preferred source by clicking here.
