Accounting Profession Has One of the Lowest Turnover Rates in the U.S.

Even though the accounting profession has a whole bunch of burned-out CPAs, it has not had as much employee turnover over the last year as other professions in the United States, according to data recently released by LinkedIn.

Accounting had the third-lowest average turnover rate (9.4 percent) from July 2021 to June 2022 out of the 13 job functions LinkedIn analyzed. The two professions that had less turnover than accounting were operations (8.8 percent) and administration (7.8 percent).

LinkedIn said the professions with the least amount of employee turnover deal more with rigid institutional systems, such as budgets, regulations, and business cycles, whereas the professions with the highest turnover rates are more consultative, interpretive, or interpersonal.

“Rather than dealing primarily with fixed systems, they focus more on emotions, understanding, and strategic decisions,” according to LinkedIn.

The profession with the highest turnover rate is human resources (14.6 percent), followed by research (13.1 percent), product management (13 percent), marketing (12.9 percent), and consulting (11.6 percent).

“Across all functions, HR has consistently had some of the highest turnover, ranking among the top three functions over the past three years,” LinkedIn said. “It’s a bit counterintuitive that HR professionals—the people most concerned with retention and turnover—are also the most likely to leave.”

The average turnover rate for all roles is 10.6 percent.

LinkedIn determined turnover rates by calculating the number of total departures over the past year, divided by the average number of employees in that same timeframe. The data is drawn from members updating their current employer on their LinkedIn profile. However, LinkedIn noted the rates reported may be below actual turnover due to a lag between someone’s actual departure and when they update their profile.

Accounting