By Ringside Talent Partners
November 20, 2024
The reports of the death of the accounting pipeline are greatly exaggerated. Well, kind of.
There is a massive accountant exodus happening right now, and the headlines are appropriately dire. Here’s Bloomberg: “There Are 340,000 Fewer Accountants, and Companies Are Paying the Price.” Or take the Wall Street Journal: “Why No One’s Going Into Accounting.”
But as we’ve reported previously, strange blips are disrupting that narrative in unexpected ways, like the odd surge in remote accounting jobs.
Today, we add another weird blip to that list: On Handshake, an employment platform that caters to college students, accounting careers are experiencing something of a resurgence, according to a recent survey from the company.
“Accountant” was the second most-posted job role on Handshake last year: Employers posted more than 27,000 full-time accountant roles on the platform. Perhaps accordingly, student interest was up as well. It’s a sliiiiight, slight uptick, but it’s something: Just over 2.5% of four-year college undergrads in the Class of 2025 on the platform were accounting majors, up from 2.1% for the Class of 2023.
While the results are exclusive to Handshake, some of the topline survey findings offer a glimpse into where student interest in accounting might head in the coming years, as Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, explained.
“Overall, accounting has several attributes that align closely with what students on Handshake have told us they’re prioritizing, namely stability: 76% of Gen Z students on Handshake are more likely to apply to a job that offers stability,” Cruzvergara told CFO Brew via email. “This makes sense—the pandemic and economic climate have certainly motivated many Gen Z students and graduates to gravitate toward opportunities they feel provide a sense of stability.”
Additionally, “more than one in four accounting jobs posted on Handshake last year mentioned social impact,” the report noted, and that seemed to resonate with the next generation of accountants.
“Our data has shown that employers posting accounting roles are incorporating this demand with much success: Jobs with social impact keywords received more than a third of all applications to accountant roles in 2023,” Cruzvergara added, noting that a desire for both stability and social impact opportunities “could also support our findings around the diversity of majors applying to accounting roles.”
And on that note: Tech majors, including students majoring in fields like computer science and business analytics, comprised around 15% of accountant applicants on Handshake last year, up from 9% in 2020. That’s likely because of the growing tech capabilities in the accounting field, Cruzvergara pointed out.
Cruzvergara is especially optimistic about the aforementioned 2.5% uptick in accounting majors. “While this increase may not seem like it signals a drastic shift, it does signify a potentially lasting trend,” she noted. “That’s because when you start to see a shift or trend in higher education majors, often the momentum builds and we tend to see these shifts last at least a few years.”
She continued: “We’re entering an interesting period for the accounting field where we’ll see a greater range of majors applying and potentially working in accounting, paired with employers starting to recruit for different skill sets and introducing upskilling opportunities. As this process unfolds we may see more of a shift in what a traditional accounting role looks like.”
Courtesy of CFO Brew