Accounting Labor Market in Australia: Trends, Career Opportunities, and Challenges

The report focuses on the accounting labor market in Australia. It reflects on the labor market trends in accounting industry of this nation, career opportunities in other two selected sectors such as telecommunication and manufacturing where the accountants play the major role, creative ways of job seeking in this industry, intercultural challenges that firms in this sector faces in Australia, and recommendations for the employers of this industry for further growth in the sector.

Running head: ACCOUNTING
Accounting
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Executive Summary
The report focuses on the accounting labor market in Australia. The first section reflects on the
labor market trends in accounting industry of this nation. The next section focuses on the career
opportunities in other two selected sectors such as telecommunication and manufacturing where
the accountants play the major role. The third section highlights on the creative ways of job
seeking in this industry. The fourth section focuses on intercultural challenges that firms in this
sector faces in Australia. Lastly, the recommendations are given to the employers of this industry
for further growth in the sector.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Australian labor market trends for the accounting and service industry.........................................3
Labor market for accountants......................................................................................................3
Trends in labor demands and supply in accounting industry......................................................4
Employment.................................................................................................................................4
Competition in labor market........................................................................................................5
Migration.....................................................................................................................................5
Imbalances in Australia accounting labor market and unemployment trends.............................6
Career opportunities in Australia’s manufacturing and telecommunication industry.....................6
Recruitment agencies in accounting industry..................................................................................7
Intercultural challenges....................................................................................................................9
Recommendations............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The purpose of this study is to assess career opportunities with the present labor market
in Australia with target industry as accounting industry. The accounting service sector has
revealed modest growth over the last five years owing to positive business confidence and rising
demand for sector- specific advisory services. As per the general market research, the accounting
entities in Australia has been valued at around $20 billion in the last year in form of revenue.
Auditing service have been the dependable source of revenue for the firms operating in this
industry over the last five years. The revenue generated from high- valued advisory services has
enhanced as clients have searched to accounting entities for advice on decreasing costs. Over the
last five years, the firms under this sector have rapidly outsourced lower accounting activities
level to international entities. The accounting sector in Australia posted an average yearly growth
of around 2.6% between the year 2012 and 2017. The employment figures reached at around
115,000 in the past year. The study also analyzes on how the present trends in Australian labor
market affects career opportunities in this industry. The reasons behind this occupation is viable
options for career path has been discussed in this study.
Australian labor market trends for the accounting and service industry
Labor market for accountants
The dynamics of labor market for accountants has been understood in context to changes
which are occurring in Australian labor market. Change in technology and globalization leading
to dynamic structural change where flexible business skills and accountant skulls are basic
requirements. This industry has integrated new technologies and become risingly involved in
global economy. The accounting industry has accounted for around 70% of all jobs (Alizadeh
2013).

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In the short run, there have been shortages of accountants in Australia particularly for
their skills and experience. The accountant shortages in this sector has been dealt with through
employer nominated temporary entry visas. The total job openings for the accountants has been
around 11000 per annum in medium term of 10 years (Carnegie 2014). There has been
significant demand for individuals with accounting skills and qualifications working in financial
and management related services. Focusing on domestic supply, the total domestic completion of
the accounting degrees are near around 2500 per annum and is not increasing. The domestic
completion of the accounting majors in all degrees has averaged to about 4700 per annum.
Besides this, immigrants with the accounting skills and knowledge have been running at around
8000 per annum that involves those who do not seek work as accountants. Most of these with
accounting qualifications has found employment rapidly in jobs commensurate with their
knowledge and skills. According to 2011 census report, a total of 196,567 individuals have been
employed as accountants. Of those accountants employed in job, it has been evident that females
have been less represented in senior occupations as compared to men. Furthermore, migration
has been main characteristics of accountant’s labor market with around 42% of accounting
profession overseas as compared to 27% of total population in this country.
Trends in labor demands and supply in accounting industry
Employment
The Census data signifies that 196,567 individuals were employed as accountants in the
year 2011. There was 11% increase over the period to 2015 as shown by labor force survey. The
data provided by the labor force survey reflects that there has been high growth in the
employment during pre- GFC boom but post- GFC the employment level declined at high rate.
The employment growth has occurred when total number of accounting students declined. In the

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year 2014 and 2015, there has been unprecedented growth in total employment of this industry.
This occurred owing to measurement error but it might be reflection of lagged post- GFC rise in
employment as well as predictions of improving conditions.
Competition in labor market
The new accounting graduates are major source of entrants into accounting. In Australia,
even though graduates with degrees have accounting skills, they always do not intend in
pursuing career in accounting and chooses degree offering several options. International students
are more interested in pursuing this accounting career than domestic students in this nation.
According to data published by ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics), the total number of
domestic accounting students declined by near about 35% since the year 2002. On the other
hand, the international students increased dramatically during this period. The labor market
trends reflects substitution between peoples mobility and occupations between jobs matching
with qualifications. However, this creates competition in labor market (Hollifield, Martin and
Orrenius 2014).
Migration
This has been one of the main characteristics of Australian labor market as it seeks in
meeting short term requirements and increase economic growth through enhancing quality as
well as quantity of human resources. Over the past five years, the total number of accountants
migrating to this nation increased at stable rate owing to improvement in immigration policy
(Docquier, Ozden and Peri 2013). Qualified accountants who have migrated to Australia over the
years mainly matched to jobs. Few evidences reflect that most of the migrants with the
accounting qualifications search employment in skilled occupations. In present years, skilled
migrants policy in Australia influenced international students choices. Highly skilled accountants

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are generally in demand and their movements might be predicted to employment opportunities
across the globe (Elsby, Hobijn and Şahin 2015).
Imbalances in Australia accounting labor market and unemployment trends
Four kinds of labor related accountant shortages have been occurring in this country
namely- skill shortages, labor shortages skill gaps and recruitment difficulties. Due to this, the
enterprises in this sector are applying other mechanisms for coping up with shortage of skills.
Larger entities are making investment in training for getting inexperienced accounting graduates
up to scratch. Several facts also reflects that the new accounting graduates have been facing
numerous difficulties in getting job in this industry (Poschke 2013). While oversupply manifest
itself in the employment of recent graduates, it gives distorted view of demand and supply in the
labor market. However, demand and supply of accounting laborers creates imbalance in this
accounting labor market. This reflects that there has been unemployment trends in Australian
labor market over the last few years.
Career opportunities in Australia’s manufacturing and telecommunication industry
With new this accounting degree qualification, it could be viable for me to work in both
manufacturing and telecommunication industries. By working as an accountant in both of these
industries, it would help me to explore my career opportunities. The manufacturing sector in
Australia has relatively low concentration of workers with graduate degrees. Therefore, sheer
size of this industry reflects that it is still important employer of the graduates from various
disciplines specially, accounting, information technology and industrial design. In the present
years, the manufacturing sector in Australia has shifted into export as well as production of
transformed manufactures mainly because of rising competition from foreign producers in this
industry. The shift towards production of complex goods and business operations requires skilled

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laborers. However, in every facets of manufacturing procedure, skilled accountants are required
to enhance the growth of this sector (Graduate Careers Australia. 2018). The salary of graduates
in this sector ranges from $35,000 to $63,300 and also requires computer- design skills for
working in this sector. For this reason, this industry and occupation is viable option for my career
path.
The telecommunication sector provides huge range of services used by the Australians
several times a day. The widespread increase in high speed digital transmission processes as well
as resilience on the mobile telecommunications services have outcome in huge change in sector.
The telecommunication sector in Australia has been deregulated in present years (Graduate
Careers Australia. 2018). The professional group those are in demand in this sector are computer
system engineers, project managers, marketing professionals and accountants. This sector
provides numerous employment opportunities for skilled and technological staffs. Moreover, this
industry is viable as the employment prospects are better as compared to other industries and
expansion of already present networks is also good. Besides this, the requirement for the
continued research as well as development in this sector have resulted in enhanced opportunities
for accountants and engineers. In addition to this, the salary of graduates ranges from $39000 to
$55000 for relevant occupations (Hawthorne 2016). Therefore, this industry are viable option for
my career path based on the research on labor market.
Recruitment agencies in accounting industry
The three creative job seeking strategies used by the Australians in this industry are given
below-

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 Recruitment agencies- These agencies administer vacancies for enterprise as well as
create profiles of the potential candidates. They are searching for suitable workers for
their clients in order to fill vacancies or contract positions. There are several recruitment
agencies in Australia’s accounting industry such as- Richard Lloyd, Hays, Benneaux,
Robert Half. Richard Lloyd is one of the biggest recruitment agencies in Sydney. This
recruitment agency’s mission is to connect accounting talent in this region with several
job opportunities. They help the job seekers to find out appropriate accounting jobs. Thy
also takes time to know about their career aspirations as well as plans for finding out the
role that suits their requirement, offering advice and guide through recruitment
procedure. Moreover, it also leverages best talent network combined with extensive
recruitment experience and also assures that every individual gets connected to proper
recruiter according to their requirements. Robet Half is another leading recruitment
agency in Australia that connects skilled individuals with the employers in permanent
positions for different fields involving technology, accounting services. It specializes in
offering businesses with skilled finance and accounting professionals on temporary basis.
Benneaux is another recruitment consultancy that specializes in accounting within public
and professional practice. Randstad is another recruitment agencies that work in
partnerships with public practice as well as government enterprise that focuses on
recruitment of accountants at every levels. However, the employers in this accounting
sector uses this recruitment method for attracting accountants in its business.
 Most of the enterprises in this sector are advertising jobs specially on internet or paper for
reaching the audience of job seekers. Recent evidences reflect that the firms operating in
this sector are advertising 18% of the vacancies in newspapers also in order to attract

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skilled accountants in their business. One of the websites namely jobactive.gov.au offers
huge range of features that includes permitting an individual to actively search for the
candidates according to their requirements.
 Government recruitment service such as jobactive is the provider that offers benefit to
sourcing staffs and facilitates the seekers to understand the business. They also take care
of the candidates screening as well as shortlisting procedure. They also suggests wages,
training programs which are available for helping to source appropriate candidate to the
firms operating in this sector.
Intercultural challenges
Intercultural challenges adversely impacts the accounting enterprises in Australia.
Multiculturalism in Australia influences all the industries including this accounting industry. As
the immigrants remain high over the past few years due to immigration policy, the varied culture
of these migrants affects the Australians (Digitalcommons.liberty.edu.2018). The business
operating in this industry are also affected owing to its different culture employees in their
business. This is because the employers of these industries in Australia faces difficulties in
communicating with the people of varied cultures. This in turn hampers the recruitment process
and business operations in this industry. Also, the migrants face difficulties in finding jobs in this
sector.
Recommendations
The recommendations are provided to this industry so that the laborers do not face
difficulty in finding jobs-

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 The accounting industry must expand their service lines in order to attract skilled
accountants in the job
 This industry must also change its accountants fee structure so that it leads to increase in
demand of accountants in this industry.
 This sector must explore new methods for reaching out skilled and knowledgeable
accountants in the job.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the accounting industry in Australia
have been facing difficulties in shortage of skilled accountants in the business. The firms
operating in this industry are finding new recruitments methods for attracting skilled candidates
in its business. In addition to this, the migrants in this country are also facing difficulty in
searching for job in this nation. However, it is vital for this industry to bring about reforms so
that accountants gets attracted to this sector.

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References
Alizadeh, T., 2013, November. Towards the socio-economic patterns of the national broadband
network rollout in Australia. In State of Australian Cities Conference, Sydney (Vol. 26, p. 29).
Carnegie, G., 2014. Pastoral accounting in colonial Australia: a case study of unregulated
accounting. Routledge.
Digitalcommons.liberty.edu. 2018. [online] Available at:
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1396&context=honors [Accessed
2 Oct. 2018].
Docquier, F., Ozden, Ç., and Peri, G. 2013. The labour market effects of immigration and
emigration in OECD countries. The Economic Journal, 124(579), 1106-1145.
Elsby, M.W., Hobijn, B. and Şahin, A., 2015. On the importance of the participation margin for
labor market fluctuations. Journal of Monetary Economics, 72, pp.64-82.
Graduate Careers Australia. 2018. Manufacturing - Graduate Careers Australia. [online]
Available at:
http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/careerplanningandresources/exploringyourcareeroptions/
careerprofiles/manufacturing/ [Accessed 2 Oct. 2018].
Graduate Careers Australia. 2018. Telecommunications - Graduate Careers Australia. [online]
Available at:

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http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/careerplanningandresources/exploringyourcareeroptions/
careerprofiles/telecommunications/ [Accessed 2 Oct. 2018].
Hawthorne, L., 2016. Labour market outcomes for migrant professionals: Canada and Australia
compared.
Hollifield, J., Martin, P.L. and Orrenius, P. eds., 2014. Controlling immigration: A global
perspective. Stanford University Press.
Poschke, M., 2013. Who becomes an entrepreneur? Labor market prospects and occupational
choice. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 37(3), pp.693-710.