The Future of the Accounting Profession...

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Bryan Carreto, CPA

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On this channel I am not trying to sell you anything other than hard work and sweat. If you do the work and stay disciplined, I promise you that you will succeed.

Please make sure to subscribe to the channel because I plan to make this channel all about the CPA exam, the accounting profession, and topics I think could help young professionals just starting their career.

Make sure to comment below any topic you would like me to cover.

My Mission:
My goal on this channel is to help all of the young professionals out there wanting to excel in their careers and in life.

So please stay tuned.

Until next time work hard and dress well

-Bryan Carreto, CPA

[diorgeslomba]

Accounting jobs needs to pay more. Students are realizing is not worth it to go get a 4 years degree plus a master’s degree and a CPA for just 60-70k starting salary. If I could go back I would do computer sciences instead of accounting. I work in big 4 and do recruiting at the university I went and we are lucky if we get 20 students to show up and all want to do consulting. 3 years ago when I graduated you had to make a 1 hour line to speak with the recruiter.

[pandaj-uc]

Passing the CPA exams is when you study hard, if you can't study or you don't have time for your studies I'd advise you get yourself a help like Mr Dylan

[zekaelkhyati]

That’s good news to recent accounting grads and future CPAs! Supply and Demand baby!

[willd]

Definitely do not lower the standards for accountants. Lack of workforce will increase wages. Increased wages will bring in more workforce. Its cyclical.

[ThomasShelby-xzfk]

Public accounting should pay 40-60% more. The wages are a joke. The worst part is often times the firms are in cities with high cost of living.

[freddyboss]

I think the tech industry has a lot to do with it. IT is a much faster path to six figures without the requirement of a 4 year degree and 150 hours and then the CPA. My younger did a 3.5 years program for computer science and just got an offer from Amazon paying 6 figures as soon as he graduates in December. Accounting needs to pay more and reduce the requirements to make it more accessible.

[conchobar]

There are no labor shortages, just wage shortages. Don't get it twisted, the current shortage of accountants will cause small raises in wages, but not enough compared with most other STEM careers.

[SaltyCaptain]

its cause public accounting firms pay shit while working you like a slave. That goes for your own firm as well. I was talking with a deloitte recruiter a few weeks prior and the conversation ended when it came to the compensation. They didnt want to pay a experienced CPA with 5 years of experience even 100K. Unbelieavable. Go convincfe the partners to stop being cheapasses.

[lavenderu]

I hate that many employers don't want to train new workers. How are we supposed to know? I took a new Accountant job and was promised training. The CPA was always in meetings. She never helped as she promised. Mind you, it was hard transitioning from bookkeeping to Accountant with totally different accounting software. Take 2 -3 weeks to get workers on board.

[Dakid]

One factor I think also gets conveniently overlooked is just the overall idea of taking a daunting exam, where there are so many challenging topics tested that a young 20 something with little or no real world accounting experience will be turned off by. Combine that with the failed guidance of senior leaders, faculty, and old accounting fogeys on how students can truly successfully pass the exam than just relying on general half a** advice, yet still promote the "great benefits" of the CPA and how it "opens doors". Which is probably why the exam traditionally has a low pass rate. What's further discouraging is the fact they disingenuously weed out a large swath of otherwise smart students at the college level who otherwise would've made good accounting professionals. And yet these same unintentionally funny and unique humans scratch their heads and wonder amongst themselves why there's a talent shortage. I think the answer to reform lies within their generational mindset. They need to see the cracks in their own mirror first before lamenting over a shortage they caused themselves.

[frank]

As an industry accountant who has a CPA and has never been in public the drop is coming from the shitty starting salary, horrible working hours of public. Inflation and house costs are up a lot now and there is a lack of new accountants, Salary in the accounting industry will HAVE to go up as companies can’t find accounting employees for peanuts and more people are looking for remote jobs now. They will have to pay more for a shrinking talent class.

[Sergio_chipotle]

A lot of what I’ve been seeing and hearing is the starting pay. So you go to school get you bachelors and after you need 150 credits to get the cpa. Then you have to actually go take the cpa. After all you still start off at 50-60k a year. Yes you have the potential to make over six figures but with time and a lot of that requires you to be in public accounting if you want to move up fast. That is a shit ton of work just to make 50-60k at a stressful job. When a lot of tech jobs all you need is a bachelors to make good money. I personally like accounting and work in AP. Once I’m done with my bachelors ima try to move up little by little and get my cpa.

[GENIUSAA]

Accountants are underpaid starting out. Thus, less students would choose accounting over other fields such as computer science or engineering.

[meyca]

As a student finishing her BS in accounting... seeing these videos are discouraging. What am I going to school for exactly? Whats the point of breaking my back to make 60-70k a year? Im going to finish the degree because im almost done, but Im thinking of other avenues now... I have a family I need to support, bills, and then I just want some money I can travel with or just buy things i want. I dont want to make just enough, I want to make more than enough. I need generational wealth, thats the goal. Turns out i have to work for 40 years in accounting to even reach that amount. Whats the point?

[AngieConfidential]

Several issues to unpack with the accounting profession.
1. The 5th year or master's degree coupled with the educational cost does not seem appealing when the starting salary as a 1st year associate is the same as when I started over 20 years ago.
2. Although there are outlined paths for advancement, the requirements to get promoted were muddy. If you did not align yourself with the right decision-makers within a firm to get the best clients (where you could shine and really show your talent) and if you were not given "good staff", advancement became out of reach. You could pack in 80 - 100 hours per week consistently, provide excellent client service, but when it came time for the firm to promote, they did not keep their promise or moved the goal post altogether.
3. One point you brought up was that there used to be a long line of folks wanting to talk to EY, Deloitte, RSM etc. The idea of exclusivity and short supply of opportunity fueled this seemingly unending supply of accounting graduates. Firms would never show up at non-predominantly white schools to recruit, they turned their noses up to people who didn't come from elite universities, wouldn't even look at those that didn't have a 4.0 GPA or some type of previous accounting internship, 37 extra curricular activities and some sort of Greek letter designation. Once these graduates started working in these firms, they soon realized the cons outweighed the pros.
4. This probably should have been #1. For industry, most hiring managers and business owners have no idea what accountants do, how much support and technology is needed to stay efficient or the skill it takes to keep it all together. Because no one knows what we do, we are constantly undervalued and the salary and bonus structures reflect that. I am at the point now where I no longer need to work and I have been trying to quit my job for 6 months now because they cannot find an adequate replacement. This is the only reason I am now being paid what I'm worth. It's sad because no one has a problem paying attorneys $750 an hour to write a letter, but they have an issue with paying a proven, qualified CPA to keep their employees paid and to keep them compliant with regulators.
5. My last point relates to the mindset of the younger generation. Most are considering entrepreneurship, desire "passive income" and their needs/wants are completely different. People these days think that 20 years of accounting experience is equivalent to Googling "accounting for beginners". In my opinion, it degrades the value of obtaining an accounting degree when people think they can start a bookkeeping business, hire a Fiverr freelancer and Google everything they need to know to complete an 1120 or keep GAAP based books.

[felipau]

I am a senior at a University and I am part of a student business organization. At the moment there is many students who are looking for internships and full-time offers. Ever since everything went virtual there was a decline with students taking accounting classes, a decline in students attending networking events, and some even took a break from school. The new abnormal seems to have made things more difficult for students to networking & interact with others though a computer screen. As everything goes back to normal I predict that many looking for career opportunities in Accounting will eventually adapt to in person again and come out to these networking events. The average starting salary for someone with 150 units and a bachelors is more than 70k. I don’t think salary is an issue here.

[jayparish]

“The Big 4 hire 70% of the accounting majors when they graduate college…In three years, 90% of those people leave the profession. They don’t leave the Big 4 firm to go on another Big 4 firm or they go to a firm like us…But they basically leave the profession [of public accounting].”
- Ed Mendlowitz, CPA, Partner Emeritus at Withum

[christiancoronado]

You are focusing in the academics, instead you should focus on the money and the lifestyle. And it's out, working in public accounting is soul crushing and doesn't pay well on an hourly basis

[Snowmanfrosty]

I wish I became a engineer! Accounting underpaid, dull to most college grads, overworked, and might be outsourced soon!

[UrbanEconomist]

I was in Public Accounting… I left for project management… working with systems and processes.