At a glance
- Experts predict an AI threat, but accounting firms face an acute skills shortage.
- An aging workforce and weak talent pipeline are causing the immediate hiring crisis.
- The real threat to some accountants’ jobs is other accountants with stronger strategy skills.
Today’s commentary on the accounting profession presents a seeming paradox.
Some AI pundits argue that new technology will squarely target accounting jobs. Leading these pundits is the World Economic Forum (WEF), an influential body that brings together business, government, academia, and civil society leaders. In its Future of Jobs 2025 report, the WEF lists accountants, auditors, and bookkeepers among “the world’s fastest-declining jobs”. It predicts 92 million global job displacements by 2030, and cites artificial intelligence (AI) as a primary driver of this decline.
A study from OpenAI also identified accountants and tax preparers as occupations that are “highly exposed to disruption” from AI. A May 2025 International Labour Organization paper reached a similar conclusion.
And in March, former chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt told a podcast that he wouldn’t recommend his children work in the accountancy sector because of the risk that AI would take over its tasks. “I can see how computers are going to [be] able to do a huge amount of the work that’s currently done by accountants,” he said.
Yet at the coalface, hiring managers are behaving as if the accountancy profession faces precisely the opposite challenge. They generally highlight an acute shortage of skilled accounting professionals – the sort of shortage that traditionally takes some time to fix. If they’re right, accountants have a solid future.
Skills England has identified accounting and finance technicians as among the top 10 critically in-demand occupations. In September 2024, more than 418,000 job vacancies were recorded for roles like “bookkeepers, payroll managers, and wages clerks”. This immediate demand suggests a significant workforce deficit.
Other bodies agree with Skills England. Recruitment agency Robert Half has observed a growing demand for accountants in 2025. Early in the year, 58% of employers planned to increase their permanent finance and accounting headcount – a six-percentage-point rise from 2024.
Steve Sully, regional director at Robert Half, explains the surge this way: “Finance and accounting professionals are drivers of business growth … The increasing complexity of the finance function means their expertise in advanced analytics, compliance, and strategic forecasting has become essential for organisational success.”
So what’s going on? These divergent views raise crucial questions about how the latest crop of technological advancements will hit professional employment. Are current skill shortages temporary? Or do they mark the high point of accountant demand before a profound shift?
An ageing workforce creates a talent gap
To find the answer, we can start by temporarily putting aside concerns about technological displacement. Workforce demographics is asserting itself as the UK accounting profession grapples with a generational replacement crisis.
Industry analyses suggest that many sole practitioners work into their mid-70s, while partners in larger firms consider retirement around age 55. This is creating a bottleneck: experienced professionals are exiting faster than new talent can be trained to replace them. The largest cohort within the accounting workforce is currently between 45 and 59 years old.
This retirement trend appears across much of the OECD. In the US, for instance, more than 300,000 qualified accountants reportedly departed the profession between 2019 and 2021. That represented 17% of the US accounting workforce.
“Firms face challenges in recruiting individuals who possess both strong technical skills and the capacity for strategic thinking.”
Richard Speight
Compounding this, experienced professionals who stay in the profession are seeking different rewards from their accountancy roles. A Sellick Partnership survey suggests that almost half (49%) of UK accountants changed jobs between 2021 and 2023. Key motivators included salary expectations (49%), burnout (49%), and a lack of work-life balance (48%).
The pipeline of new talent is not enough to close these gaps. Student numbers across major UK accounting bodies fell 3.5% in 2022. A 2024 survey of 337 accountancy professionals found several deterrents for young people; they include negative stereotypes (57%), high education costs (47%), and lengthy qualification processes (42%).
The result? Employers face fierce competition for a shrinking talent pool, driving up salaries and benefits as the profession loses some of its appeal to younger generations. Robert Half’s Steve Sully says it is “no secret that the cost of employment is increasing”.
The enduring role of human expertise
If demographics is driving up current demand for accountants, is this a hump before the slump – that is, before the moment when AI automates accounting? Or does the profession have more staying power than forecasts suggest?
Indeed, the predictions of accounting disaster turn out to be hedged around with conditions. The ILO, for instance, says that its warning of job loss “does not imply the immediate automation of an entire occupation, but rather the potential for a large share of its current tasks to be performed using this technology”. The future of accounting, it says, will actually depend on how the profession’s members “learn to work with these technologies and adapt to the evolving nature of their tasks”. It will also be shaped by the extent to which AI complements human expertise.
This evolution is showing up as recruiters struggle to find accountants for roles. Jamie Smith, a manager at finance and accounting recruitment firm Marks Sattin, has put this well in a blog post on his firm’s website. “AI is a tool, not a replacement,” he writes. AI follows the patterns in existing data. By contrast, he argues, accountants and other finance professionals have long had to “adapt to unforeseen challenges, whether it’s a sudden regulatory change, an economic shift, or an unexpected audit finding”. Smith is one of the accounting industry figures arguing that the AI threat to individual accountants’ jobs come not from AI itself, but from other accountants who use AI engines as powerful tools to work more efficiently.
Here Smith touches on an important point: much of the accounting profession is already making increasing use of AI at the same time as it searches for more people. Thomson Reuters’ 2025 Generative AI in Professional Services Report says its global survey of 1,700 professionals found tax professionals raising their AI use more quickly than any other professional group they polled. Thomson Reuters reports that “52% of accounting firm staff already use an open-source generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT”.
A shift in the skills mix
The WEF says that clerical, secretarial, administrative, and data-entry roles are projected to experience the sharpest declines among accountancy roles. These roles often perform precisely the repetitive, process-driven tasks that AI excels at performing.
But these are no longer the primary skills driving demand within the accounting profession. The required skills mix has shifted towards regulatory expertise, ESG (environmental, social, and governance) analysis, audit compliance, client advisory services, and strategic financial planning.
This last point on the need for strategic capability is perhaps the most important. Richard Speight, a recruiter for accounting and finance for Morgan McKinley explains that the sector is being transformed by changing employee expectations. He adds: “Despite robust demand within commerce and industry, firms face challenges in recruiting individuals who possess both strong technical skills and the capacity for strategic thinking.”
While technology undeniably transforms the industry, the demand in accountancy is increasingly centered on interpretation, relationship management, and advice – tasks that at this point remain stubbornly human. The talent pipeline will have to adapt to these new requirements.
Technology may alter the nature of accounting work, but it cannot fill critical roles that struggle to attract suitable candidates. Adapting to technology will not be enough. Until the industry prioritises rebuilding its talent pipeline, the genuine risk isn’t obsolescence; it’s scarcity.
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