# PCAOB economists reported registered audit firm staffing increasing steadily from 2015 to 2024, and rising per dollar of client revenue, with non-CPA accountants growing about twice as fast as CPAs

Page: https://flyvolo.ai/en/changes/ev-20250701-auditor-3
Date: 2025-07-01 · Stage: Labour impact
Can this record move a task judgement? yes
Occupation: https://flyvolo.ai/en/careers/auditor

## Scope

Public accounting firms registered with the PCAOB only (which can include non-US firms; "CPAs" may include comparable non-US licences), counted from the staffing figures those firms file with the regulator on Form 2, against issuer revenues from Compustat as a proxy for audit volume. The second measure is the one that matters here: staffing rose even after dividing by the revenue of the companies being audited, so the rise is not simply clients getting bigger. Two limits the report states itself — registered firm staff may work on matters unrelated to issuer audits, and firms whose issuer clients had no Compustat revenue were excluded. The period ends in 2024, and headcount is the crudest of the measures that could move: it says nothing about what those people spend the day doing. The composition shift is worth reading separately from the total: the fast-growing half is non-CPA accountants, who cannot sign.

## Source

- PCAOB Office of Economic and Risk Analysis — Data Points: Registered Firm Staffing Trends — https://assets.pcaobus.org/pcaob-dev/docs/default-source/economicandriskanalysis/data-points/2025-dp01_registeredfirmstaffingtrends.pdf?sfvrsn=383aa3eb_1 (primary source)

## What this means

Through the decade in which audit software, analytics and now generative AI arrived, the number of people working at registered audit firms went up steadily — and kept going up after dividing by the revenue of the companies they audit. Whatever technology has changed inside the audit, it has not so far shown up as fewer people doing it.

## What it does not show yet

Headcount is not the same as the work. A firm can hold staff flat in count while the mix changes underneath — and the mix is changing here: non-CPA accountants grew about twice as fast as CPAs, so more of the growth sits below the licence. The series also ends in 2024, which is early for generative AI to appear in an annual filing, and it counts people at the firm, not hours on an issuer audit.

## How to verify it yourself

Look at your own team and count two numbers: how many people can sign, and how many cannot. Then ask someone who was there five years ago what that ratio used to be. That ratio, not the total, is where this kind of change shows first.


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