Audit Profession Talent Shortage: The Data, Why It Hits Mid-Tier Firms Hardest, and What Actually Works

How bad is it? The numbers by region and function

The numbers are worse than most partners realise, partly because the headline figures mix accounting, tax, advisory, and consulting into one pool.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the accounting and auditing workforce shrank by 17% between 2019 and 2022. That’s over 300,000 people leaving the profession in under four years. The unemployment rate for accountants and auditors sat at 2.0% in 2025 (BLS data cited in Robert Half’s 2026 hiring report), which means the people who left didn’t become unemployed. They moved to tech, banking, private equity, and consulting. Robert Half’s 2026 Salary Guide projects finance and accounting salaries rising 2.1% on average, but audit and assurance roles specifically are projected to gain 3.7%, reflecting the tighter supply.

The pipeline is contracting at the entry point. Accounting degree completions in the US have dropped 20% since 2010. The AICPA’s National Pipeline Advisory Group published its final report urging firms and educators to treat the next few years as a window to rebuild the pipeline before the damage to financial reporting becomes more visible. National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data showed two consecutive semesters of roughly 12% year-over-year growth in accounting enrolments during the 2024–25 academic year, but those students won’t reach the workforce for four to five years.

In the Netherlands, the AFM reported in 2022 that four out of ten audit firms face staff shortages. NBA’s own data from 2023 showed accountancy student numbers declining relative to total university enrolments since 2017. The average age of an auditor in the Netherlands is 46 (NBA, 2022), and 30% of firms report more professionals approaching retirement than entering the field (Advancetrack 2025 Talent Index). With over 22,000 members, the NBA’s register keeps growing, but the share working in public practice audit continues to contract.

In the UK, the pattern repeats. ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA, and AAT have all expanded apprenticeship programmes as an alternative to university entry. Graduate positions still go unfilled. Experienced auditors remain acutely short.

Why audit is losing differently from tax

A July 2025 CPA Journal article by Megan Grady and Jon Durrant (California State University Fullerton) analysed employment data and found something that contradicts the blanket “accounting shortage” narrative. The decline in new hires is concentrated almost entirely in tax and advisory services. Between 2014 and 2020, the number of graduates hired into audit positions actually increased by 7%.

That doesn’t mean audit is fine. It means the pressure on audit comes from a different direction: retention, not initial attraction. Audit hires come in, but they leave faster than tax hires. The Robert Half 2025 Salary Guide shows the median early-career salary gap between tax and audit at approximately €7,500 (or the dollar equivalent in the US), and that gap widens at the senior associate level to roughly €9,000 by 2026 projections. Grady and Durrant’s data suggests this salary differential is one of the strongest predictors of which sub-profession loses people fastest once they’re past the two-year mark.

For a mid-tier Dutch firm running six to eight audit teams, this means the bottleneck isn’t finding first-year associates. It’s keeping third-year seniors. A senior who has passed their RA intermediate exams knows exactly what their market value is. If your firm pays €5,000 below the competitor across town, that senior will leave before they qualify, and you’ll absorb the training cost without the return.

The 2026 Robert Half projections suggest audit salaries are beginning to accelerate as firms try to close the gap with tax. Whether this acceleration will be enough to reverse the retention differential is an open question, but the data is clear that audit needs to compete on compensation at the senior associate level specifically, not just at entry.

What the AFM sees when it inspects short-staffed firms

The AFM doesn’t publish a standalone report on staffing, but staffing shows up in inspection findings indirectly. When the AFM flags insufficient audit evidence, missing professional scepticism, inadequate documentation, or incomplete risk assessments, the root cause is often that the team didn’t have enough experienced people to do the work properly. A file reviewed by a senior with 18 months of experience looks different from one reviewed by a senior with four years.

Professor Marcel Pheijffer (a prominent Dutch accounting academic) has publicly cautioned that hiring from abroad does not automatically guarantee quality, particularly when cultural and regulatory context matters. PwC Netherlands acknowledged in 2025 that artificial intelligence is expected to replace a portion of foreign staff in the near future as automation takes over routine accounting tasks. For mid-tier firms watching the Big 4 response, the message is mixed: offshore staffing fills capacity gaps today, but it introduces quality risks that the AFM will eventually examine.

Robert Half’s 2025 research paints a stark picture: 86% of finance and accounting leaders have experienced challenges hiring and retaining accountants. More pointed for audit firms: 15% report the situation is “critical,” with multiple open roles they cannot fill at all. When staffing gaps reach this level, the risk isn’t just slow progress on files. Advance Auto Parts (a US public company) disclosed in 2024 that turnover in key accounting positions created a material weakness in its financial reporting controls, delaying a 10-Q filing. That’s an extreme case, but it illustrates the end point of unaddressed staffing risk.

The Advancetrack 2025 Talent Index reported that 48% of respondents perceive the talent shortage to be moderately or significantly worse compared to the position from several years earlier. Among the responses, 61% of firms have turned to outsourcing work overseas, 44% are dealing with rising salary pressure, 42% are investing in staff development, and 38% are investing in technology.

What mid-tier European firms are doing that works

The generic advice (“raise salaries, improve culture, offer flexibility”) isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete for a 30-to-80-person audit firm that doesn’t have a Big 4 employer brand or a recruitment budget above €50,000 per year. Here’s what’s actually producing results at the mid-tier level in Europe, based on the data.

Salary benchmarking at the senior associate level specifically. The CPA Journal research shows the attrition spike happens at years two to four. Firms that benchmark against Big 4 senior associate rates (not just against other mid-tier firms) and close the gap to within 5% report better retention. This is expensive. It’s also the single intervention with the most direct impact on file quality.

Structured career path documentation. Many mid-tier firms offer a faster path to partner than the Big 4 does, but they don’t document it. A senior associate considering their options sees a Big 4 career page with milestones, timelines, salary bands, and partner-track criteria, then sees nothing comparable from your firm. Writing down the path (with realistic timelines and approximate salary ranges at each stage) costs nothing and removes a significant information asymmetry.

Technology investment as a retention tool, not just an efficiency tool. The Advancetrack survey found 38% of firms are investing in technology. But the retention benefit comes from showing staff that their work will become less manual, not from the efficiency gain itself. Firms that roll out data analytics on audit sampling (replacing hours of manual tick-and-tie with automated population testing) report that younger staff perceive the work as more interesting. Perception matters when the competing offer is a fintech company promising no spreadsheets. One SRA member firm in the Randstad told Accountant.nl that their investment in an automated analytical review tool reduced manual procedures by 40% per file and cut voluntary turnover among associates under 30 by half in the year following implementation.

Selective use of contract professionals during busy season. Robert Half and similar agencies report that firms using interim audit professionals for peak periods (rather than trying to maintain permanent headcount for peak demand) can reduce burnout among permanent staff. Burnout is the second most cited reason for leaving audit after compensation. Bringing in two contract seniors for January through March costs less than losing one permanent senior in April.

ACCA and international qualification pathways for non-Dutch hires. Dutch firms that hire ACCA-qualified professionals from outside the Netherlands and support their transition to the RA track can access a broader talent pool without the quality risks of fully remote offshore work. The candidate works on-site under your supervision, learns Dutch regulatory context in real time, builds relationships with your client base, and progresses toward an RA qualification. The AFM is more likely to accept this model than a fully offshore one.

Worked example: a 40-person Dutch firm losing two seniors in busy season

Firm scenario: Dekker & Janssen Accountants B.V., a 40-person SRA member firm in Utrecht, audits 65 statutory audit clients (mix of BV and NV entities, €2M to €45M revenue). Two senior associates (both in their third year of the RA programme) resign in November, effective 31 January. Peak audit season runs January through April.

Step 1: Quantify the immediate capacity gap

Each senior was carrying four to five audit files as the primary fieldwork lead. Losing both removes eight to ten files from the schedule. At an average of 120 chargeable hours per file, that’s 960 to 1,200 hours of senior-level work that needs reallocation or external sourcing.

Step 2: Triage files by deadline and complexity

Seven of the ten affected files have statutory reporting deadlines before 30 June. Of those, two are PIE-adjacent (large BV subsidiaries of a listed group) and require the most experienced staff. The managing partner assigns the two PIE-adjacent files to the firm’s most experienced remaining senior and one manager, accepting that those staff will be over-capacity for Q1.

Step 3: Engage interim professionals

Dekker & Janssen contacts two recruitment agencies (Robert Half Netherlands and a specialist audit staffing firm) to source two contract seniors for January through April at approximately €65 to €80 per hour. Total cost estimate: €52,000 to €64,000 for two seniors over four months. This is less than the annual fully loaded cost of one permanent senior associate (approximately €70,000 including pension and social charges).

Step 4: Conduct an exit analysis

Both departing seniors cited compensation as the primary reason, with one also mentioning workload during the previous busy season. The firm’s senior associate salary is €4,800 below the Big 4 equivalent for the same experience level. The managing partner approves a salary adjustment for remaining seniors, closing the gap to within €2,000 of the Big 4 rate.

Practical checklist: staffing risk management for your firm

1. Run a salary benchmark against Big 4 senior associate rates in your market (not just against other mid-tier firms), focusing on years two through four of the RA or equivalent qualification track.
2. Document your firm’s career path from associate to partner with realistic timelines and approximate salary ranges at each stage. Publish it internally and use it in recruitment conversations.
3. Build a relationship with at least one audit staffing agency before busy season starts. Having a pre-vetted contract pool eliminates the two-to-four-week lead time when a resignation lands in November.
4. Track your attrition data by qualification stage: pre-RA, mid-RA, post-qualification. If your losses concentrate at one stage, that’s where your intervention should focus.
5. Add a staffing risk assessment to your ISQM 1 annual evaluation. Document current headcount against projected file load for the next 12 months, with a contingency plan for losing one or two seniors.

Common mistakes in responding to the talent shortage

• Matching salary only at the entry level. The CPA Journal data (Grady and Durrant, 2025) shows the attrition problem is at years two to four, not at entry. A €3,000 entry-level raise has almost no effect on the senior associate who’s already decided to leave.
• Treating offshore or remote staffing as a permanent fix without assessing quality implications. Professor Marcel Pheijffer and the AFM have both raised concerns about this approach. Contract professionals who work on-site under your firm’s supervision are a defensible staffing model. Fully remote staff in a different time zone, working on Dutch statutory audits without Dutch regulatory context, carry quality risks that will eventually surface in an AFM inspection.

Related content

Frequently asked questions

Further reading and source references

• Bureau of Labor Statistics: accounting and auditing workforce data 2019–2022, unemployment rate 2025.
• AICPA National Pipeline Advisory Group: CPA exam candidate trends and pipeline recommendations.
• Robert Half 2026 Salary Guide: finance and accounting salary projections, audit-specific data.
• Advancetrack 2025 Accounting Talent Index: global survey of accountancy leaders on talent challenges.
• Grady & Durrant (CPA Journal, July 2025): employment data analysis on audit vs. tax hiring and retention.
• AFM 2022 Report: Dutch audit firm staffing observations.
• NBA 2023 Data: accountancy student enrolment trends in the Netherlands.