Why the Shortage Is Structural, Not Temporary

CA ANZ has confirmed that tax accountants and auditors have been added to Australia's Occupation Shortage List following months of advocacy and survey data showing vacancy fill rates well below the 67% threshold that indicates a national shortage. The inclusion acknowledges what most firm principals already knew from experience: positions are going unfilled, and the candidate pool that used to exist is not there anymore.

The numbers that created this situation have been building for over a decade. The number of students completing bachelor-level and above accounting programs in Australia almost halved in the decade to 2020, falling to around 2,278 graduates per year according to CPA Australia data published in January 2024. At the same time, the ABS projected that Australia would need 338,362 accountants by 2026, requiring close to 10,000 new professionals entering the workforce every year to meet that demand. Roughly 22,000 experienced accounting professionals are also projected to retire in the five years to 2026. The pipeline is contracting while the demand end is expanding and the retirement wave is accelerating simultaneously.

This is not a problem that resolves in one or two years. The CA ANZ submission to Jobs and Skills Australia called for accounting occupations to be retained on the Core Skills Occupation List to support skilled migration pathways, alongside changes to course fees and school curricula to bring more students into the profession. Even if those policy changes are implemented quickly, their effect on the graduate pipeline takes years to materialise. Firms planning on the basis that this will be easier in 2027 are likely planning on optimistic assumptions.

What It Is Doing to Costs and Capacity

The vacancy pressure is flowing directly into salary expectations. Senior accountants and managers are seeing pay rises of 10 to 15% according to current market analysis, and partners are under pressure to offer more attractive remuneration packages just to retain people they already have. Replacing a senior accountant in the current market is not just expensive in recruitment terms. The time cost of finding someone, the productivity gap during the handover period, and the knowledge lost when an experienced person leaves a firm all carry real financial consequences that are hard to quantify but easy to feel in the quarterly numbers.

Over 750 Australian accounting firms are already outsourcing some compliance functions offshore to manage the gap, according to current industry data. The firms moving in this direction are not doing it because it is their first preference. They are doing it because the domestic talent market cannot supply the headcount they need at a cost structure that makes sense for a compliance-focused service. Smaller firms are outsourcing bookkeeping, payroll, and tax preparation to providers in the Philippines, India, and Vietnam. Larger firms are using offshore member firm staff to fill audit and specialist roles they cannot recruit for locally.

What Firms Are Doing to Protect Capacity

The firms managing the shortage most effectively are not trying to win the hiring competition by paying more than everyone else. They are reducing the amount of headcount they need to deliver the same output by removing the low-value work from their workflow entirely.

Data cleaning, bank statement reformatting, import prep, and bank rule maintenance are the tasks that consume junior and mid-level hours most consistently without producing proportionate value. When those tasks are automated or systematised, the remaining work that needs a qualified person is concentrated on the things a qualified person is actually needed for: review, advice, client communication, and judgment. A firm that reduces the volume of preparatory work per client by 30% does not need to replace three junior hires with three new hires. It needs fewer people to handle the same client book.

That shift also helps with the retention problem. Experienced accountants who spend less of their time on administrative and data-handling tasks and more on complex client work are more likely to stay. The shortage makes every departure more expensive. Anything that reduces the likelihood of departure has a compounding return.

The Takeaway

The tax accountant shortage is confirmed, documented, and structural. It will not resolve quickly and the firms waiting for the market to normalise are likely to keep waiting. The practical response is not to outbid competitors for staff who are already in short supply. It is to reduce the per-client work volume through better systems, push low-value tasks out of the qualified accountant's day, and make the remaining work genuinely worth staying for. Firms that make that shift now will be in a better position when the market is still tight in two years.