We covered this story in yesterday’s Monday Morning Accounting News Brief but it’s significant enough news to earn its own spot in a separate article as it’s a large market and involves a helluva lot of people.
We first saw this on Reddit a few days ago:
KPMG UK Audit layoffs
by u/Educational-West4131 in Big4
You may remember PwC UK doing a similar round of “voluntary” separations in 2023. Very similar, actually: PwC needed 600 people to leave and the firm blamed low attrition for the move. Here we are three years later and KPMG UK is making the same ask of hundreds of auditors.
Bloomberg had this to say in their story on Friday:
KPMG UK has told nearly 600 staffers in its audit business that their jobs are at risk, according to people familiar with the matter.
Impacted employees were informed that they could be laid off, subject to a redundancy consultation, according to a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg News. The company ultimately expects as many as 440 people will leave the business if the proposal goes ahead following that consultation process, according to one of the people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing non-public information.
Said the firm in a statement to Bberg: “Current market conditions mean our attrition rates are very low within certain parts of our audit population, which is why we are proposing to right size those areas. This isn’t a decision we take lightly.”
KPMG UK’s total headcount is 16,739 as of October 2025. 600 people is about 6% of the audit workforce.
Didn’t someone share that although this is 6% of the total workforce, this is actually 60-80% of the total staff/senior auditors? I can’t remember if that was on a reddit thread of actually posted here too
Bloomberg said audit is 7,100 people deep before the cuts and this round affects mainly “assistant manager” roles. I’m seeing elsewhere that the 600 figure includes 100+ people in advisory possibly.
Thank you!
Also it seems there are multiple reports on this probably to obscure the true amount….
600 layoffs out of 16,700 is 6%?. I guess that’s why you’re a journalist, not an accountant.
They’re laying off 6% of the **audit** workforce, and 16,700 is the **total** workforce (i.e. including tax, advisorys etc)
nah its just a rounding error…immaterial PFW.
3%
And you missed how it says TOTAL followed by AUDIT WORKFORCE. I guess that’s why you’re an accountant and not an editor.
To be fair, I do suck at math.
Let’s raise the education requirement from 120 hours to 200 hours to let accountants be in demand by employers.
I shared this with my team to remind them that all firms have layoffs and the best way to avoid layoff is to work as hard as possible!