Supply & demand

It has been a while since ads showing young accountants jogging across Tower Bridge in London and strolling along China’s Pearl River were last seen on Australian television.

It might soon be time to dust them off again.

For months, the federal government has been declaring that the country has all the accountants it is likely to need, not without reason.

In its most recent assessment of the labour market for accountants, the Department of Education reported that “there has been a marked rise in the number of applicants for accountant vacancies over the past five years, and particularly over the past two years”.

Specifically, it found that, between 2010/11 and 2012/13, the average number of applicants for each accounting job vacancy doubled to 40, with virtually all applicants being qualified accountants. Last year, in fact, there were four suitably qualified and experienced applicants for each vacancy, double the number five years earlier.

This has coincided with a drop in the number of vacancies. From a peak of almost 133 points just as the global financial crisis struck in mid-2008, the government's Internet Vacancy Index for accountants plunged to less than half that by late 2009 and has hovered below 50 points for the most of the past year.

And an accounting degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket to a job. Graduate Career Australia figures show that in 2008, almost 89 per cent of accounting students were in full-time employment soon after graduating. But that proportion fell sharply in 2010 and by last year had dropped to 77.4 per cent.

As job prospects have dimmed, so has interest in an accounting qualification – the number of domestic students enrolling in and graduating with accounting degrees has fallen. Around 3,000 completed an undergraduate degree in 2008; by 2011, it dropped to just over 2,500*.

The jobs market slowdown has led the government to question the need to give accountants migrating to Australia special visa access. Currently, accounting is included on both the Skilled Occupations List and the Consolidated Sponsored Occupations List. It means that migrants with accounting skills, entering either of their own volition or sponsored by an employer, are eligible for a work visa.

The recently defunct Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, which advised the Department of Immigration on skills shortages, had included accounting on a watch list of occupations that could have special visa access withdrawn". But making it harder for accountants to enter Australia may be premature. Though the raw figures suggest the country has an ample supply of accountants, recruiters say they paper over areas of significant shortage.

The regional director of accountancy and finance at recruitment company Hays, Lynne Roeder, says accountants with skills and experience in auditing, information technology and payroll are all in high demand.

According to Debra Eckersley, managing partner for human capital at PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia, the widespread adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards and US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) means accountants experienced in working to these standards are in particularly high demand, as are those with audit experience in superannuation, banking and capital markets.

Both Eckersley and Roeder emphasise the strong and growing demand for accountants with IT skills.

And there's another looming factor that could impinge on employers' current luxury of being able to wait for the perfect candidate to come along. Although Australia continues to attract accountants from around the world, recruiters warn that firming economic conditions in key financial centres in the US an Europe mean global competition for staff is intensifying.

The next accounting campaign may not be far away.

Footnotes:

1 http://docs.employment.gov.au/system/files/ doc/other/accountantsclusteraus.pdf, p2. 2 http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/research researchreports/gradstats/3 http://docs.emplo ment.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/accountan clusteraus.pdf, p44 http://www.awpagov.au/ our-work/labour-market-information/skilled-occo pation-list/Pages/Flagged-Occupations.aspx