As reported by WSJ yesterday and Reddit a few days before that, Forvis Mazars is laying off 3% of the US workforce. As with many recent batches of layoffs at the upper echelon of public accounting, the firm is pointing to lower-than-expected attrition as the reason.
WSJ:
The firm informed affected staff last week it would be letting go of roughly 250 people, or 3% of its U.S. workforce totaling more than 7,700, the people familiar said. Audit, tax and advisory personnel were affected.
“We regularly evaluate our current business demand to ensure we are positioned to deliver exceptional service to our clients while maintaining a strong talent pipeline,” Forvis Mazars said in a statement. “This assessment sometimes results in targeted workforce adjustments to align our staffing levels with business needs.”
It’s been about three years now that firms across the board have been citing this lower-than-expected attrition, starting with former EY CEO Carmine Di Sibio throwing out a number on a CNBC appearance in May 2023: “It really has nothing to do with ChatGPT…YET,” he said on Squawk on the Street. “It has to do with the fact that many companies were hiring based on attrition rates that were much higher a year ago, a year and a half ago post-Covid, you know, people were leaving, The Great Resignation. Those attrition rates, for example for ourselves, went from 20, over 20 percent, down to 12, pretty suddenly.”
Accountant shortage who?
Comments on r/accounting back this claim up, FWIW:
It seems public accounting is in a nasty holding pattern at the moment. Job market sucks so people don’t want to leave, firms need them to leave because they aren’t making the kind of money they were just a few years ago and need to replace more US salaries with offshore ones, you get the idea. Now we’ve got AI investment in the mix too, they’re going to have to start showing some kind of ROI for all the money they’re throwing at that.
The layoffs will continue until morale attrition improves.
If you were affected by this layoff and want to share your experience, get in touch via email or text. Hang in there, everyone.
