I speak with firm leaders every day. The same challenges keep coming up: too few qualified CPAs, a year-on-year cumulative talent shortage impacting succession planning, and margin compression creating handcuffs and rigidity in firm decision making.
Enrollment is down. Graduation rates are down.
The result? CPA numbers are falling, and firms are feeling it.
According to the latest data from the Journal of Accountancy, graduate accounting enrollment dropped another 2.8% heading into Fall 20241. And CFODive reports a 6.6% drop in accounting degree completions in 20252, despite rising undergraduate interest. The pipeline is leaking talent faster than it can fill, and firms are still left scrambling.
Reuters recently reported that U.S. firms are turning to offshore talent at a much higher rate, just to keep up with demand3. I see that happening daily.
But here’s the thing: traditional offshoring models don’t solve the real issue.
They often sacrifice agility, quality, and team cohesion in the process.
At Makosi, we built our model to do the opposite. We combine tech, quality, and cost to enable firms to build talent for scale.
Since 2023 alone, our clients at Makosi have unlocked more than $26M in profit through smarter deployment, higher utilization, labor arbitrage and flexible resourcing. Our consultants have delivered 2.5+ million hours across top firms with an average utilization rate over 100 percent and satisfaction scores consistently above 4.6 out of 5.
This is what a modern global agile workforce solution looks like.
The Traditional Model Isn’t Built for This Market
Client expectations haven’t changed, and regulatory pressure is up. Teams are stretched, and busy season fatigue is compounding year on year.
You can’t out-recruit your way out of this.
Most firms are still trying to manage it with the same resource model they were using a decade ago. It's often slow, expensive, and rigid. It doesn’t flex with demand. It doesn't attract the right people quickly. And it ties up capital in overhead that should be going toward growth.
Makosi was designed to solve all of this, and we’re constantly proving it works.
We give firms immediate access to the world’s best global accounting talent. Fully vetted, matched to your systems and standards, and ready to perform. We built Luna, our own smart proprietary platform, to ensure you can scale resources up or down in real-time. We save our clients up to 30% on labor costs and help increase billable utilization by over 20%.
I’m seeing this in real-time, this is what’s happening for firms that choose a smarter model.
WIN Lab: Building the Pipeline That Doesn’t Exist Yet
We didn’t stop at global delivery. We launched Workforce Insights Navigator (WIN) Lab to equip firms with the tools they need to plan better, work smarter, and grow profitably
With WIN Lab, firms get data-driven insight into how talent is being deployed and how to optimize it. We're seeing clients unlock up to 35 percent in profitability improvements simply by using smarter workforce strategies.
It’s simple. If the talent pipeline isn’t delivering what the industry needs, we’re not waiting for someone else to fix it, we’re building a better one.
The firms that move now will be the ones still growing three years from now.
The others will still be stuck in the same hiring war, only with fewer options and higher stakes.
And with busy season right around the corner, this isn’t the time for hesitation. If you’re short on staff, over-leveraging your managers, or turning down work due to capacity, this isn’t the time to stand still.
So, if you’re ready to stop chasing resumes and start building a model that works, let’s talk.
1 - Report: Undergraduate enrollment in accounting on the rise
2 - US accounting degree graduates drop 6.6% | CFO Dive
3 - U.S. accounting firms tap India to alleviate talent crunch | Reuters
