We don’t have to tell you that the accounting and finance industry is facing major challenges, whether it’s from AI or an aging workforce.
But a recent BambooHR survey found a troubling datapoint for the industry—a third of new accounting and finance hires quit within their first year. The survey results also showed a 3:1 senior- to entry-level hiring ratio.
BambooHR’s survey of full-time salaried employees, business owners, and C-suites of small to midsize businesses in the US garnered 1,248 responses between March 24 and April 9, 2026. BambooHR’s analysis is derived also from six years of workforce data—from approximately January 2020 to February 2026—encompassing over 480,000 employee data points from more than 2,000 companies around the world.
Unclear remit. One root cause of the “quit” numbers among hires, at least at the entry level, BambooHR CFO Justin Judd told CFO Brew, is likely mismatched expectations between new hires and senior management amid the rise of AI.
Historically, with junior-level analysts or accountants, “there’s been a fairly clear understanding of what they do,” Judd said. “You’re doing data entry work, or you’re doing base model building, or you’re building the spreadsheets that someone more senior is going to use to do analysis. You’re finding data, you’re maybe building a database to extract that data.”
Now, however, “senior-level accountants and senior-level analysts in finance have new tools where they can do some of the work that used to be done by entry-level team members on their own or with the assistance of technology or other systems. What that leaves is a question of, ‘What do I do in an entry level role?’” Judd said.
What’s changed for entry-level hires? “We’re seeing this even in my own teams; we have entry-level roles where we’re actually expecting a lot of them…I may not just be asking you to do some basic data entry or data work, but actually help us think differently.”
While Judd recognized that these findings weren’t necessarily unique to finance and accounting, they do underscore the impacts that technology like AI has had on white collar jobs like accounting.
“I think what’s happening is some of those more senior level folks are staying longer, and hiring is happening more at those levels because you have leaders saying, ‘Well, with the new tools, what do I need? I actually need someone with judgment still, the ability to discern,’” Judd said.
Orchestration needed. In CFO Brew’s recent State of the Industry report, 77% of respondents noted strategic thinking and problem solving as the most important skills for finance and accounting’s next generation. Judd said AI is driving these priorities as it automates more entry-level work.
“I’m glad that a generative AI tool has let us generate something that’s interesting, but is it right? Is it correct? You have to have leaders who can look at something, and one, orchestrate and design…you have to figure out how to orchestrate, and in some ways, you are an architect of a system, you’re an architect of a process where, in the past, you might have just been doing work; now you’re orchestrating or architecting automation.”
Onboarding. Judd believes the way through accounting and finance’s talent issues is highly intentional talent development and onboarding processes, where expectations are laid out clearly and training is heavily prioritized.
“That onboarding approach and plan needs to be even more solid than it has been in the past,” he said. “We like to use regularly—and I think it’s a really good practice—‘What is your 30, 60, 90 day plan? What are we expecting for you? What’s your detailed onboarding? Who are you meeting with? What are your initial tasks? What are your initial assignments?’”
BambooHR is “currently spending a lot of time making sure folks are trained, they have access to the tools, they’re being thoughtful about what it means,” Judd said. “It’s that intentional focus on having a plan and then developing your people that I would say is…it’s a little bit of a wake-up call to say, are we really paying enough attention to where we’re headed?”