Morning! I’ve scraped up a little news for you so you can start your week off well-informed. We’ll be starting with the bad news.
In this news brief:
- Gen Z men with degrees aren’t finding jobs any easier than their non-degreed male peers
- Grant Thornton and its deep private equity pockets supposedly want to acquire Grant Thornton Australia
- KPMG is picking up stakes and leaving its downtown Atlanta office
- Wow, Talk About Being Understaffed
- Common Man vs Big 4 Firm Using AI
- Prediction Markets, Taxes, and You
Gen Z men with degrees aren’t finding jobs any easier than their non-degreed male peers
Fortune went straight up doomer with their headline and added that this is “a sign that the higher education payoff is dead.” I don’t know about all that but it certainly isn’t good.
Gen Z is struggling to break into the entry-level job market—but young male college graduates may be hurting the most.
Data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.6%.
Although it remains lower than the 7.8% rate among all young workers between 22 and 27 years old, men with a college degree now have roughly the same unemployment rate as young men who didn’t go to college, according to an analysis of U.S. Current Population Survey data by the Financial Times.
Fortune went on to pull out this figure: Around 2010, “non-college-educated men experienced unemployment rates over 15%, whereas the rate among college graduates was closer to 7%.”
Seeing as I’m old and was here for 2008, I remember when accounting had an overall unemployment rate hovering around 3%. Something tells me if the economy hits another bottom like that we won’t be seeing similar numbers. Back then they didn’t send all the work overseas.
Grant Thornton and its deep private equity pockets supposedly want to acquire Grant Thornton Australia
Grant Thornton Australia, the country’s eighth-largest accounting firm by revenue, is in advanced negotiations to sell the business to its American counterpart.
Street Talk understands Grant Thornton US, which is partly owned by New York’s New Mountain Capital, is in active due diligence to acquire the Australian operation.
GT Australia revenue was $270 million USD last year.
KPMG is picking up stakes and leaving its downtown Atlanta office
CoStar reports that KPMG is consolidating and downsizing in Atlanta:
One of the nation’s largest accounting firms is adding its name to a cohort of tenants ditching space in downtown Atlanta and relocating their offices elsewhere in and around the city.
KPMG signed a lease to consolidate its regional footprint at the Proscenium building at 1170 Peachtree St. in Midtown. The roughly 105,000-square-foot agreement with landlord Cousins Properties means the professional and accounting firm will uproot its longtime hub at Truist Plaza in the city’s central business district, where it occupies about 100,000 square feet, as well as its 22,000-square-foot office in Midtown’s One Atlantic Center.
While the relocation will ultimately result in a slight downsizing for KPMG’s Atlanta footprint, a spokesperson said the future office will be designed to accommodate more employees.
Their regional workforce is a little under 2,000 people.
Wow, Talk About Being Understaffed
Across the pond, a private credit “shadow bank” has collapsed and all sorts of things are coming out. The latest from Telegraph is that their accountant was a firm with just two people. It used to be three, which isn’t much better.
The “shadow bank” at the centre of an alleged fraud scandal rocking the City hired a tiny accountant with just two employees to work for its £2bn business, The Telegraph can reveal.
Market Financial Solutions (MFS), which collapsed last week amid allegations of fraud, listed Magus Chartered as its main accountants in its most recent annual report.
Magus’s own accounts show it had just two employees in 2025, down from three in 2024.
Read more about this situation from WSJ: How a British Mortgage Company Became Private Credit’s Latest Black Eye
Common Man vs Big 4 Firm Using AI
Up north, Chartered Professional Accountants Newfoundland and Labrador is investigating Deloitte’s use of AI commissioned government work and it’s due to this guy reading a story about it in the local paper and filing a complaint:
A professional accounting watchdog has launched an investigation into Deloitte’s production of a $1.6-million healthcare report to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador which contained AI-generated errors.
After reviewing a complaint from a resident of the province, Chartered Professional Accountants Newfoundland and Labrador (CPANL) has decided to investigate Deloitte’s use of artificial intelligence in the Health Human Resources Plan the global accounting and consulting firm created for the province as part of the government’s efforts to address the crisis in healthcare staffing.
This is actually amazing. This guy saw the story, got mad, and filed a complaint with the provincial accounting body to do something about it. The story continues:
In his complaint, Bruce said he has “substantial concerns” with Deloitte’s use of fabricated sources in the healthcare report, noting the firm had recently been caught in a similar scandal in Australia, in which Deloitte refunded a portion of public money it was paid to produce a report for the federal government.
Bruce says Deloitte appears to have used AI “in bad faith,” saying the firm was “not trying to find the best path forward” for the province’s healthcare staffing crisis. “They were trying to sell a particular path.”
The report cost taxpayers almost $1.6 million CAD.
Earlier story: Major N.L. healthcare report contains errors likely generated by A.I.
Prediction Markets, Taxes, and You
North Carolina State University tax professor Nathan Goldman discusses prediction markets and how they’re affecting state tax revenue in Forbes. I knew prediction markets had gotten out of hand when we had a tweet go viral the other week and people were placing bets on how many views it would get in 24 hours. That is not a joke.
His article covers both the implications for states and for taxpayers:
Despite the fact that sports betting companies and prediction market companies might face differential tax liabilities on the wagers placed, individual bettors still face a tax liability on them. However, this wedge grows when considering the differential tax treatment for sports bets and prediction markets.
For instance, winning sports bets are taxed as gross income, and the bettor can only deduct losing bets as an itemized deduction. As the majority of taxpayers do not itemize their deductions, many taxpayers must pay taxes on winning bets without deducting their losing bets. However, prediction markets offer a key tax advantage in that their wagers may be eligible for netting treatment under capital gains rules, depending on classification. This means that regardless of whether the bettor itemizes their deductions or not, the taxpayer can deduct their losses to the extent of their wins.
Worth a read if you’re into this stuff.
And that’s going to be it for this edition of the Monday news brief. Go out there and make it a good one. Email or text if you have a tip, story, or rant you think needs to be spread to the counting masses.
SEC, CFTC and IRS Make Case for Thousands of Hires in 2012 [