Now, that narrative is starting to flip.
The result: a quiet resurgence in accounting, with young professionals flowing into a field offering stability, strong demand, and increasingly, lucrative starting salaries.
“I have not talked to another accounting person who has a degree in accounting who cannot find a job,” Blazevich told Fortune.
“For many of my classmates, it felt like we were recruiting firms just as much as they were recruiting us,” Price said. “We had the luxury of choosing from multiple offers rather than worrying about whether we’d land a job at all. This allowed us to be deliberate about finding the right fit.”
The appeal of accounting has been more than stability for Blazevich—it’s about optionality.
“When you major in accounting, and you study accounting, you are learning the language of business,” he said.
“I have that flexibility. Accounting people can go to HR, sales, marketing… but finance and HR people, they cannot go into accounting.”
University outcomes reflect that advantage. At Blazevich’s alma mater—the University of Iowa—95% of the class of 2025’s accounting graduates secured a job or continued their education, with median salaries of $75,000.
Kristina Right, a senior career services director at Gies, said that in the wake of shifting trade winds, accounting firms have become more targeted in their recruiting strategies, and thus many students are finding success with the networks they build through internships, for example.
“Accounting is probably one of the industries where we still see really strong employment, and our students are probably less impacted by the current market,” she told Fortune.
Many entry-level accounting roles require only a bachelor’s degree, though candidates looking to sit for the CPA exam typically need 150 credit hours, which many fulfill through a master’s or a combined five-year program.
At just 26, she’s earning $113,000 as a CPA at a boutique tax firm—a career she arrived at circuitously. After graduating with a finance degree from Arizona State University in 2021, she accepted a role as an accounting specialist at an insurance company and “fell in love” with the work. She went back to school for a master’s in accounting and hasn’t looked back.
While the busy tax season has brought long hours—around 50 a week—Mavashev sees it as a sign of the profession’s health, not a drawback: “It’s very, very rewarding. It feels like you’re playing your part in making the economy better,” she told Fortune.
Blazevich, for his part, isn’t losing sleep over AI rendering his skills obsolete. If anything, he sees the versatility of accounting as a built-in safety net.
In accounting, especially, that human layer is hard to remove. A CPA’s signature carries legal weight, client relationships are built over years, and even small errors can trigger regulatory scrutiny.
“At the end of the day, there is going to need to be some human being signing off, or at least reviewing what the AI did,” Blazevich said. “If the accounting labor market shrinks, there’s still going to be a [broader] labor market.”
