Incorporating NQ magazine
April 2025
www.pqmagazine.com/www.pqjobs.co.uk
TALENT CRISIS IS REAL The shortage of newly qualified accountants is creating a real talent gap and imbalance in the workforce, according to the latest Reed accountancy and finance salary guide. Reed’s Alan Myers said this shortage is partly due to disruptions in professional training during the pandemic years, as training contracts were delayed and professionals chose alternative career paths. It all means there is a surplus of senior professionals, but insufficient entry-level talent to sustain longterm growth. Myers felt that addressing this gap “will require renewed focus on training and development to ensure a robust pipeline of talent for the future”. Firms that prioritise upskilling are more likely to retain their workforce and maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Dr Ian Gregory, CTO at Advancetrack, said that 74% of accounting firms are struggling daily with staff shortages, and 42% of partners are working an additional day every week just to keep their heads above the water. He said the AdvanceTrack
Accounting Talent Index found while three-quarters of firms reported significant staff shortages, some 20% still had no concrete plan to address it. The real issue, however, is the undergraduate and postgraduate accounting enrolment pipelines. The Talent Index found that between 2010 and 2023 domestic student enrolments into tertiary accounting programmes declined by an average of 56% across the UK, US (61%), Canada (54%) and Australia (51%). The Accountancy Talent Index
said: “To call the talent crisis an existential threat is far from a shrill overstatement. Accountants and the accounting profession underpin the trust which sits at the foundation of global capitalism. Without them it is more than possible that the entire system could collapse.” This is a global concern. Joanna Perry (pictured) from Australia recently posted on LinkedIn: “We are facing a massive talent crisis in accounting and nobody is talking about it.” She feels the reality is we’re
ACCA MARCH EXAM FEEDBACK The ACCA March exams have finished, so where were the problem papers this time around? Well, it appears no one liked sitting the tax papers. One in four of those sitting the TX and ATX exams this time around said they had a ‘disaster’, according to the Open Tuition Instant Poll. One TX sitter described their
exam as ‘just crazy’, another said it was ‘brutal’. For ATX sitters the exam was ‘quite hard’ and ‘shocking’, all at the same time. What really concerned one sitter was the unusual nature of the exam. A leading tutor told PQ magazine
that while the ACCA does not release papers anymore it is almost impossible to work out just how hard papers really are. “I really do think it is time the ACCA released the full papers again,” he ventured. The other papers that student admitted they struggled with were
heading towards a 3.5 million global shortage of accountants in 2025. This, she stressed, isn’t a staffing problem, it is a business crisis waiting to happen. And, Perry said, it is time to reimagine the entire profession. She said we need to show young professionals the true scope of modern accounting careers (‘Make Accounting Great Again’). Perry feels the shortages mean unprecedented opportunities for students. “You won’t just find a job – you will have your pick of roles, industries and work styles.” As she explained: “The talent crisis in accounting isn't coming – it’s here.” That LinkedIn post already had over 8,000 likes, 879 comments and 748 reports when we saw it. In the US, former CFO Howard Katzenberg said companies there are raising accountants’ salaries by over 10%. With many struggling to find them he claimed major firms like EY are throwing money at the problem: “EY pledged $1bn to boost salaries,” he said. For him the bottom line is simple: rare skills will equal higher salaries.
AFM and SBR. At the other end of the scale there were mixed emotions from those sitting the SBL exam, but with an ‘OK’ rating of 63% in the Open Tuition Instant Poll, most sitters thought the exam was ‘alright’. One sitter even said: “I thought it was quite a good paper.” AA was deemed another ‘easier’ paper this time around. Check out page 17 for all the feedback.
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