Accounting faces talent crunch with 15,000 job openings forecast

Monday, 28 July 2025

It took Go Accounting director Michael Parker a couple of years to fill two of the roles at his Nelson accountancy practice and he feels lucky he managed to make those hires.

“We really struggled to find people with the skill sets we were looking for. One of our new hires is a rural accounting specialist, and finding someone with those skills was particularly hard.”

To have done so was an achievement as there were not enough people in the profession, especially with a level of experience in particular areas, he said.

“There is a mismatch in terms of the skills needed and the people available. So while we are not hiring right now, if a great candidate knocks on our door it would be hard to turn them away. We would find space for them.”

While skill shortages in the healthcare and education industries have been extensively reported, the shortage of accountants is less well known.

But not only does a shortage exist, it is set to get worse off the back of increased demand, particularly in growth areas such as climate and sustainability reporting and audit and assurance, according to an organisation representing chartered accountants.

Infometrics has forecast there would be more than 15,000 job openings for accountants in the next five years.

“A combination of the flow-on effects of Covid where more people were heading overseas after being unable to do so during the pandemic, and challenges with the incoming talent pipeline are driving the shortage,” said Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) government affairs lead Lydia Tsen.

“Enrolments in accounting and finance bachelor degrees have fallen by around 40% since 2018,” she said.

“It’s a situation where students don't have a perception of accounting for a career at all. They don’t necessarily have a bad perception of it, they just don’t even consider it.”

And yet accountants were needed to drive productivity and provide certainty in the economy, Tsen said. “They are integral to every listed company and public institution, and deeply involved with start-ups and high-growth businesses.”

An example of what could happen when there were not enough of them occurred during Covid, when a shortage of auditors meant businesses were struggling to make the statutory deadlines, she said.

“If we don't have the staff we need to conduct public sector audits, which are critical for the robustness of our public finance system, that’s a major issue for our financial and capital markets and it impacts on business confidence.”

The shortage was most critical in auditing - auditors were on tier one of Immigration New Zealand’s green list, she said.

Cameron Town is co-director of Silks Audit Chartered Accountants, which has seven offices around the North Island. He said recruitment was a real struggle, particularly in regional areas.

His regionally based practice did a lot to try and attract candidates, he said.

“We work to create a great work environment, we use a buddy system for all new staff to ensure they feel supported and trained, we use new technology - including AI - as tools to help staff, and we’ve increased remuneration and do six monthly reviews.”

Culture and communication were also important, but for many of the staff it was their first job and they wanted to go off and explore their options, so turnover was quite high, he said.

“We do employ some people who have retired from the profession, but do some work for us, and we have also recruited from overseas, but the long-term solution to the issue is boosting the domestic pipeline.”

CA ANZ has done a significant amount of work to make the profession more attractive to young people, and to firm up their information resources at a school and university level, he said.

“It’s all about making accounting more appealing as a career option.”

The organisation was doing this in a number of ways, including engagement with educators and students, a strong marketing campaign that showed the opportunities accounting could lead to, and creating alternative pathways into the profession.

Tsen said these initiatives had generated quite deep engagement, but it was important to let people know it was a profession with a shortage, and one that would always be needed.

There were huge opportunities in accounting for young people, and there was a strong starting salary and a lot of room for progression, she said.

“But it is critical that more people change their perceptions,and understand the diversity of our profession.”

For Parker, out-of-date perceptions about what accountants do were making it harder to recruit people into the profession.

Accountants no longer just sat in a back office, typing away on a spreadsheet all day, he said. “The profession has changed, and the reality is very different now.

“These days, it’s very client-facing. It is about helping people with not just accounts but business decisions and new technology. Often we are in almost a mentor role, working with people facing real challenges.”

His role was extremely varied, for example. One day he might help a client buy a business, the next he might do a podcast with a mortgage broker, and the next he might work with a software developer to build a tool to help businesses perform better.

There were many progressive firms empowering their staff to do interesting work, and hiring people from different backgrounds to do it, he said.

“But more people need to know that, and that there are opportunities to get into a great industry and do something different - especially when unemployment is rising and many industries are cutting jobs.”