Say "Zai Jian" to the CPA Shortage?

Not long ago our main site, JobsintheMoney, ran a story headlined: "Job-Market Forecast: Not a Cloud in Sight."

Well, make that one cloud.

Bruce Pounder, a management accountant whose main business is teaching professional development seminars for CPAs and CMAs, sees a grave, albeit not necessarily imminent, threat to the U.S. accounting profession arising from convergence to International Financial Reporting Standards.

"Convergence" refers to the movement, now picking up steam in the U.S. and elsewhere, to abolish country-specific accounting standards in favor of a unified worldwide standard. In a Q&A interview published on AccountingWeb, Pounder wrote that convergence

is likely to globalize and commoditize the accounting labor market….

U.S. accountants could find themselves to be small fish in a big global pool of accountants – all of whom will be qualified to compete against each other for jobs anywhere in the world, and most of whom will be willing to work for far less compensation than U.S. accountants now enjoy. This phenomenon, coupled with the increasing ease of off-shoring accounting and financial reporting work, is a major threat to the continued employability of U.S. accountants.

See JobsintheMoney for the full story.

Standards Convergence: Further Spur to Offshoring? [JITM]