Accounting Firms Report Strong Hiring Outlook, AICPA Report Finds

NEW YORK (Oct. 27, 2025) – Accounting firms have a strong hiring outlook this year, with three-in-four of those that recruited new staffers in 2024 indicating plans to hire the same amount or more in 2025, according to a biennial American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) report on trends related to accounting graduation rates, the CPA Exam and hiring demand by accounting firms.

Among the findings of 2025 Trends: A Report on Accounting Education, the CPA Exam, and Public Accounting Firms’ Hiring of Recent Graduates:

• Public accounting firms that responded to the survey reported hiring a total of 11,985 new graduates in 2024. (Because of a low response rate by firms, the aggregate number of new graduate hires by firms last year in the United States could not be projected with confidence.)

• Of those new hires, 75% were accounting graduates.

• Of firms that hired in 2024, three-quarters (75%) said they expected to add a similar number of staff or more in the current year. Only 18% anticipated lower hiring rates.

Efforts to boost the number of new accounting graduates continue to face headwinds. Graduates who earned either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in accounting fell to 55,152 in the 2023-24 academic year, a drop of 6.6% compared to the previous year. That’s a slower rate of decline than in the previous two school years (9.6% in 2022-23 and 7.4% in 2021-22), a period when lingering pandemic impacts broadly affected U.S. college graduation rates overall.

Provisional data for the 2023-2024 academic year released last month by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, show 40,817 students earned an accounting bachelor’s degree that year, a drop of 3.3% compared to the previous year.

Those who earned master’s degrees in either accounting or taxation declined approximately 15% to 14,335 degrees. That decrease aligns in part with a steeper drop in the funnel of bachelor’s degree earners in previous years.

The 2023-24 provisional graduation data, while recently released, is a lagging indicator of student demand for accounting degrees. Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center document two consecutive semesters of 12% year-over-year growth in accounting enrollment in the 2024-25 school year, which suggests the pipeline to the profession is on the upswing.

“While we continue to see a contraction in the supply of accounting graduates, it’s encouraging the rate of decline has slowed year over year,” said Jan Taylor, CPA, Ph.D., the AICPA’s academic-in-residence. “That suggests some of the initiatives the profession has pursued in recent years are starting to have an effect. 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.”

As expected, the number of new candidates who took the CPA Exam fell from 2023 to 2024, the first year of a new exam model that focuses on assessing core competencies in accounting, auditing, tax, and technology while assessing additional competencies in one of three disciplines: information systems and controls; tax compliance and planning; or business analysis and reporting. Historically, the year before a major change in the CPA Exam sees a surge in test takers and 2023 was no exception: 42,626 new candidates entered the exam pipeline, the highest tally since 2016. That compares to 28,082 new candidates entering the pipeline in 2024. The 2025 testing year, which is not reflected in the Trends report, showed growth with 16,448 new candidates entering the exam pipeline through the first six months of the year. This upward trend suggests strong demand for the CPA license as candidates prepare for the evolving demands of the profession.

The Trends report documents numerous ways the AICPA and stakeholders across the profession are working to build a strong accounting workforce, from expanded student outreach programs, initiatives to remove financial and administrative hurdles to completing the CPA Exam, and faculty bootcamps to reinvigorate accounting education. “The collective efforts by multiple stakeholders to strengthen the pipeline are making an impact,” the report found, “but sustaining momentum is crucial.”

Data for the Trends report comes from multiple sources. That information and the report’s methodology are explained in detail within the document.