NZ Accounting Talent Shortage 2025: The Structural Numbers | Outrun
New Zealand faces a structural shortfall of 15,000 accountants over five years. Student enrolments have almost halved since 2018. Two independent drivers explain why this will not resolve on its own — and what it means for your clients.
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New Zealand faces a structural shortfall of 15,000 accountants over the next five years, according to Infometrics — at the same time student enrolments in accounting programmes have almost halved since 2018.
This shortage is structural, not cyclical. Two independent drivers are compressing the profession's supply: a pipeline that has been declining for nearly a decade, and a sustained brain drain to Australia driven by a persistent salary gap. Neither driver responds to improvements in domestic economic conditions. Both will continue through the forecast window.
This post documents the data behind that assessment and what it means — for NZ accounting firms and for the NZ businesses that rely on their services.
The Pipeline Problem: A Decade of Enrolment Decline
Accounting degree enrolments in New Zealand have declined by approximately 40% since 2018. That figure comes from CA ANZ NZ Country Head Lydia Tsen, speaking to The Accountant Online in September 2025. A separate CA ANZ submission to the NZ Treasury confirms that domestic enrolments began falling as far back as 2016 — before COVID, before the post-pandemic labour squeeze, and before the current economic softening.
Several factors are compounding the trend.
NCEA curriculum changes. Accounting lost its standalone subject status at NCEA Level 1 when it was merged into a broader "Commerce" subject. That standalone status will not return until 2028. Students who might have been drawn to accounting as a specific subject at secondary school now encounter it as part of a generic commercial curriculum. Some schools have dropped the subject entirely — Otahuhu College discontinued accounting in 2024 because it could not find a teacher.
Competition from other disciplines. Health, engineering, and IT programmes have expanded enrolment capacity and carry stronger career marketing than accounting currently does.
CA ANZ has responded with new pipeline initiatives — CA Foundations, launched July 2025; CA Fundamentals for school leavers. Their necessity is itself the signal. A profession that needs emergency pipeline programmes is not a profession in a cyclical dip.
The downstream effect is direct. The students who enrolled in 2021 or 2022 graduated in 2024 or 2025. The cohort now entering the workforce is a fraction of what it was five years ago.
The Brain Drain: Who Is Leaving and Why
Stats NZ recorded 71,800 departures of New Zealand citizens in the year ended June 2025 — up from 67,500 the prior year, and approaching the 13-year record of 72,400 set in February 2012. The net loss of NZ citizens in that period was 46,500. Of the 71,800 departures, approximately 48,000 went to Australia specifically (NZ Herald, citing Stats NZ data).
The cohort most relevant to accounting firms is concentrated in this departure wave. Migrants aged 18 to 30 made up 27,200 of those departures — 38% of the total. This is the early-career group that practices depend on for staff development and future supervisory capacity.
The driver is quantifiable. The trans-Tasman salary gap across accounting roles runs at 20 to 40%, according to the Robert Walters 2025 Salary Survey:
Source: Robert Walters Salary Survey 2025
The gap has not narrowed. After an 11% median salary spike in 2022, NZ accounting salary growth returned to 3% per year through 2023, 2024, and 2025, bringing the CA ANZ NZ median to $144,200 (CA ANZ Remuneration Survey 2025). Australian salaries have continued rising. The financial case for crossing the Tasman remains strong for any mid-career accountant with options.
The result is what recruitment professionals call the "missing middle." Madison Recruitment identified the $80,000 to $120,000 salary range as the hardest segment to fill in NZ accounting — representing professionals approximately three to seven years post-qualification. This is the supervisory and client-relationship tier that practices depend on most.
How Serious Is NZ's Accounting Talent Shortage?
New Zealand faces a shortfall of approximately 15,000 accountants over the next five years. This figure was cited by CA ANZ NZ Country Head Peter Vial in August 2025 and repeated by Lydia Tsen in September 2025, both in The Accountant Online, drawing on Infometrics forecasts. The original Infometrics Sector Profile is subscription-only, but the figure has been cited in multiple official CA ANZ contexts.
To contextualise it: CA ANZ has approximately 26,468 NZ members (FMA Accredited Body Report, December 2024). Stats NZ records approximately 21,000 employees in NZ accounting services (Business Demography, February 2025). A projected shortfall of 15,000 against a current professional workforce of 26,000 to 35,000 chartered and affiliated accountants represents a gap of roughly 40 to 60% of the current workforce. That is not a rounding error.
Why it won't self-correct:
The enrolment decline has been running since 2016. Even if enrolments stabilised today, the cohort graduating in 2028 or 2030 was formed by decline-era intake figures. The pipeline cannot produce at scale within the five-year forecast window.
The NCEA curriculum change removes accounting's standalone subject status until 2028. The secondary school pathway — where many students first develop interest in accounting as a career — remains suppressed for at least two more years regardless of policy intent.
The salary gap driving departures has not narrowed despite NZ salary growth. The 20 to 40% trans-Tasman differential has persisted through years of NZ salary increases. There is no mechanism in the current labour market that closes it.
One apparent counter-signal: SEEK NZ data for November 2025 showed accounting job advertisements down 1% year-on-year, while applications per job ad rose 26%. This looks like labour surplus. It resolves as cyclical softening layered on top of the structural shortage — fewer roles advertised in a weaker economy, but the underlying supply constraints unchanged. Firms that do open roles face the same structural gaps they faced before.
What This Means for NZ Accounting Firms
The missing middle problem is the defining operational issue. The $80,000 to $120,000 cohort — the supervisory tier responsible for review work, client relationship management, and junior staff development — is the hardest to retain and the most likely to be in the departure-prone age range. Losing one person at this level in a small practice is not an inconvenience; it is a material capacity risk.
Robert Walters observed across the accounting and finance sector in Q1 2025 that firms were absorbing departing employees' responsibilities rather than backfilling. The immediate problem is solved; the capacity for growth is compressed.
CA ANZ's 2021 survey of NZ's 13 largest audit providers found average active recruitment times exceeding six months for specialist roles. That figure predates the accelerated departure volumes of 2024 and 2025. For a firm trying to maintain delivery capacity while a role sits unfilled, six months is not manageable at sustainable pace.
Salary pressure compounds this. Retaining mid-career staff who have options across the Tasman requires commitments that may not be sustainable against the modest revenue growth the NZ accounting industry is currently recording. The structural nature of the shortage means that economic improvement does not resolve these pressures. The pipeline and the brain drain are supply-side constraints. A stronger domestic economy does not refill either.
What This Means for NZ Businesses
NZ businesses that rely on accounting services — or that employ finance staff directly — are competing in the same constrained talent market that accounting firms face.
The missing middle salary range ($80,000 to $120,000) overlaps directly with the range where many NZ business finance roles sit: financial controllers, management accountants, senior bookkeepers. These are not accounting firm roles. They are in-house positions that NZ businesses across professional services, construction, retail, and manufacturing are trying to fill from the same thin, high-turnover pool.
When a client raises staffing constraints in their finance function, or when they are struggling to fill a financial controller role within a reasonable timeframe, the accountant who understands the structural context can frame a different conversation. Not "that position is competitive right now" — but "the shortage of finance professionals in this salary range is projected to persist for at least five years, and the pipeline that would normally refill it has been declining for almost a decade."
That framing changes the client's planning horizon. It shifts the question from "when will this get easier?" to "what structural response makes sense for our situation?"
The shortage will not ease with the next economic upturn. The enrolment decline and the salary gap driving departures are both supply-side constraints, independent of NZ's domestic demand conditions.
A Supply-Side Shortage Requires a Supply-Side Response
The accounting talent shortage is driven by pipeline failure and brain drain — both supply-side constraints, neither responsive to domestic economic conditions. For NZ businesses facing constraints in their finance function, offshore staffing addresses the supply-side gap directly rather than competing further in a thinning domestic market.
For a framework on how to advise clients on offshore staffing as a response to the talent shortage, see the NZ Accountants' Guide to Advising on Offshore Solutions.
Download the NZ Advisory Toolkit — practical advisory tools for NZ accountants helping clients navigate offshore staffing decisions.
