For most of accounting's history, the talent supply was relatively predictable. Universities produced a steady stream of accounting graduates, the Big 4 absorbed the top tier, and the rest filtered into industry roles. Today, that pipeline is broken. The combination of declining enrollment, an aging CPA population, and sustained demand growth has created a structural gap that is reshaping how companies hire – and where they look.
According to the AICPA's 2023 trends report, the number of accounting graduates entering the workforce has declined meaningfully over the past five years. Accounting as a career has faced competition from higher-compensation technology and finance roles, and the perceived ROI of the 150-credit-hour CPA requirement has deterred candidates who might otherwise have entered the profession. The result is a narrower entry-level pipeline feeding into the mid-level roles that growing companies need most.
The number of candidates sitting for the CPA exam peaked in 2016 and declined by more than 30% through 2023. College graduates are choosing software engineering, data science, and financial technology over traditional accounting paths. The candidates who do pursue accounting are increasingly concentrated at larger firms, leaving mid-market and growth-stage companies competing for a thinner slice of the qualified pool.
The shortage is not uniform across experience levels. Junior accounting talent (zero to three years) remains relatively accessible. Senior accounting talent at the Director or CFO-track level is expensive but findable. The critical gap is at the five-to-ten-year mark: accountants experienced enough to own complex processes independently – month-end close, AR/AP management, audit prep – but still willing to do the hands-on execution work rather than purely managing others. This is exactly the profile that growing companies need most, and exactly the profile that's hardest to find.
Top accounting talent gravitates toward recognizable employers: Big 4 firms for early career, Fortune 500 companies for mid-career, high-growth tech companies for equity upside. A PE-backed industrial company in Cincinnati or a Series B SaaS business in Austin is competing against these employers for the same limited pool with fewer brand advantages and often lower compensation budgets.
Experienced accounting talent clusters in major coastal markets. Companies outside these markets – which includes a large share of PE-backed middle-market businesses – face even more limited local supply. Remote work has partially addressed this, but even remote-posted roles still draw disproportionately from coastal talent pools.
Senior Accountants who commanded $85,000 in 2021 are now expecting $110,000–$130,000 in comparable markets. For companies with tight headcount budgets, this escalation has priced them out of the domestic talent pool they relied on previously.
The most significant structural response to the shortage is the shift toward global accounting talent – a strategy that removes the geographic constraint and opens the hiring aperture to a global pool of experienced, US GAAP-proficient professionals. Companies that have made this shift consistently report that global accounting talent, when properly sourced and vetted, is equivalent in quality to what they were finding domestically before the shortage intensified.
The three-to-six-month US hiring timeline means that waiting until a role is vacant before starting the search results in sustained operational gaps. CFOs who have adapted to the shortage build proactive talent relationships – maintaining connections with talent solutions before a departure happens, not scrambling after one.
Pre-vetted fractional global talent has become a practical bridge solution for companies that can't immediately justify a full-time hire. An AR Specialist at 20 hours per week through a talent marketplace addresses the immediate operational gap while the company decides whether full-time headcount is warranted – faster and cheaper than leaving the role open.
The most common misconception about global accounting talent is that "global" means "low quality." This was a reasonable inference in 2015, when most global accounting was delivered through legacy shared-services models using junior staff on rotating assignments. The landscape looks different now.
For example, the Filipino accounting profession has developed a professional infrastructure aligned with US standards. Filipino CPAs are trained using US GAAP frameworks, many sit for and pass the US CPA examination, and Big 4 firms in Manila train accountants using the same methodologies as their US counterparts. A global accountant with seven years of Big 4 experience and direct exposure to US company engagements is a fundamentally different profile from a data-entry resource at a legacy BPO.
The critical variable is sourcing. The quality of global accounting talent is highly variable, and the difference between a strong hire and a poor one is determined almost entirely by how candidates are sourced and vetted. Pre-vetted talent marketplaces that conduct multi-round technical assessments, communication evaluations, and credential verification before presenting candidates have addressed the quality problem. Legacy outsourcing agencies that accept the majority of applicants haven't.
MAVI was built specifically for the problem growing companies face in the shortage environment: needing experienced accounting talent quickly, without paying the premium the US market now demands. MAVI's pre-vetted network of global finance and accounting professionals – with Big 4 backgrounds, CPA credentials, and US GAAP proficiency – gives companies access to the experience level they need at a cost structure they can sustain.
Candidate profiles are delivered within 48 hours. Onboarding completes in as few as five days. All administrative overhead – contracts, payments, compliance – is handled by MAVI, so finance leaders can focus on the work, not the talent acquisition.
Yes, the shortage is structural and data-confirmed. It continues to drive three-to-six-month domestic hiring timelines and significant compensation escalation. The underlying factors – declining graduate enrollment, mid-level talent concentration at large firms, and geographic clustering – haven't reversed.
Three compounding factors: structural pipeline decline with fewer accounting graduates entering the profession; mid-level talent gravitating toward Big 4 or tech company roles with stronger brand and compensation; and geographic concentration, with experienced accountants clustered in major coastal markets and limited supply elsewhere.
Leading CFOs are shifting to global accounting talent to remove the geographic constraint, moving from reactive to proactive hiring by maintaining relationships with talent solutions before vacancies occur, and using fractional arrangements to bridge gaps immediately without committing to full-time headcount.
Yes, when properly sourced. Pre-vetted global accountants with Big 4 training, CPA credentials, and years of US company engagement experience are equivalent in quality to what US companies were finding domestically before the shortage intensified. The critical variable is vetting rigor – MAVI admits only 2% of applicants after multi-round technical assessments, which is fundamentally different from agencies doing minimal screening.