The UK’s Big Four accountancy firms have slashed graduate recruitment and cut hundreds of early-career roles as artificial intelligence begins to automate the junior work once assigned to school-leavers and university graduates.
Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — who together employ around 100,000 staff across the UK — have scaled back their graduate and school leaver intake over the past two years, with some reducing hiring by nearly a third.
KPMG made the steepest cuts, trimming its graduate cohort from 1,399 in 2023 to just 942 — a 33 per cent reduction. Deloitte cut its scheme by 18 per cent, followed by EY and PwC with cuts of 11 and 6 per cent respectively.
The drop in hiring is being fuelled by an industry-wide pivot towards cost-cutting, as firms look to maintain seven-figure partner payouts in the face of a post-Covid slump in consulting and tighter client budgets. Increasingly, those cuts are being delivered by generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which can automate tasks that were once the training ground for junior analysts.
“The Big Four are looking at AI very seriously to replicate junior work more cost-effectively,” said James O’Dowd, managing partner at executive search firm Patrick Morgan.
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