Why accountants are quitting has a published answer, and it is three answers rather than one. In the AICPA's 2025 National MAP Survey, the primary reasons firms gave for members leaving included leaving the profession or a career change at 24%, moving to another firm at 23%, and retirement at 24%. Only one of those three keeps the person in accounting. One left for another career, one left for good, and one just moved down the road. No national survey knows why the people who left your firm left, and the records that do are already in your practice management system.
What the Departure Data Actually Says
The published answer names three reasons, reported at roughly the same rate, and each one points somewhere different. Primary reasons for firm-member departures included leaving the profession or making a career change at 24% and moving to another firm at 23%, while another 24% cited retirement, up from 15% in 2020 (2025 National MAP Survey).
Notice who is answering. The survey asks firms about voluntary turnover, meaning departures the employee chose rather than the firm, so these are the reasons a firm recorded rather than the reasons a leaver would give. That gap matters most on the first of the three, because a firm usually finds out that someone left accounting altogether long after the exit interview.
The base is real, and it is wider than the completion count. A total of 1,073 firms completed the survey, more than 1,400 answered at least part of it, and every response is included in the final data whether or not a firm answered every question. It ran from May 5 to July 18, 2025 and asked for fiscal year 2024 information. Its respondents lean small, with 81% in firms whose net client fees sit below $5 million, the survey's term for firm revenue (2025 National MAP Survey).
One more limit is in the wording. Those are the primary reasons rather than a complete accounting of every exit, so read them as the top of the list and not the whole of it.
Three Exits, Three Different Fixes
Where someone went decides what the departure means to you. Someone who moved to another firm stayed in the profession and took the training you paid for with them. Someone who left the profession is gone from the pool your next search draws on. Someone who retired was always going to, and the only open question was the date.
The federal projection cuts those destinations differently, and more coarsely. Many of the openings projected each year for accountants and auditors are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, accountants and auditors). That counts the people who left the occupation and the people who left work altogether.
The accountant who moved to the practice across town never appears in that count, even though that move is the departure your firm feels first. And an opening has never been a person standing by to fill it.
So one retention program aimed at all three destinations is aimed at nothing in particular. Pay and progression speak to the person leaving for another firm. Workload and role design speak to the person leaving the profession, which is where burnout sits. Succession speaks to the retirement share, and it needs a longer runway than either of the other two.
The Retirement Share Is the Number That Moved
Of the three, retirement is the one with a clear direction of travel. Another 24% cited retirement, up from 15% in 2020, which the survey reads as the impact of an aging leadership group (2025 National MAP Survey).
Firm size changes the mix. Turnover for career changes or firm moves increased as firm size increased, as did the percentages of people leaving due to retirement (2025 National MAP Survey). A small firm's departure profile is not the national one, and the national one is what the headlines are built from.
Replacing those people is a separate question with its own evidence, and it lives in the entry pipeline rather than in exit data. Quitting and not entering are different problems that produce the same empty chair.
Pay Moved, and It Moved Most Where It Had Lagged
Firms did respond on pay. Initial salaries for new hires rose nearly 17% for master's degrees and about 11% for bachelor's degrees over two years, and the increases were particularly robust at firms with less than $5 million in net client fees (2025 National MAP Survey). That band covers most of the survey rather than only the smallest practices.
The increases were not spread evenly. The rise was seen across all positions tracked, with more significant increases for senior associates and managers, groups whose pay increases had been more modest in recent years, while interns saw a 24% rise to $35,586 (2025 National MAP Survey).
The push came from inside the profession. The AICPA formed the National Pipeline Advisory Group, known as NPAG, in July 2023, and its report called for the profession to make an immediate shift in starting salaries to be competitive with other majors and professions vying for top talent (2025 National MAP Survey).
Read the pay finding next to the departure finding. One survey reports both, in the same fiscal year, without connecting them, so a firm that raised salaries and still lost people has not contradicted anything here. Higher pay makes an offer competitive, and whether it changed anyone's mind is a question this survey did not ask.
The Explanation the Survey Does Not Support
One popular explanation appears in the data and comes back small. Remote-work availability did not seem to be a factor in retention, and only 1% of firms reported that the lack of a remote-work option was a reason for voluntary turnover, down from 3% in the prior survey (2025 National MAP Survey).
The context is that remote work is not rare. The median firm had 20% of its staff working remotely, unchanged from the previous survey (2025 National MAP Survey). At least half the firms are already at that level or above it, so something this common is unlikely to explain many departures, which is a narrower claim than saying flexibility does not matter to anyone.
The Median Small Firm Recorded No Departures at All
The exodus reads differently once it is cut by firm size. A firm turnover ratio is departures divided by average staff headcount, and the survey reports one for every size band. In the four size bands below $1.5 million in net client fees, the median firm turnover ratio was 0.00%, and it rises with size from there to 3.00% from $1.5 million to $5 million, 8.00% from $5 million to $10 million, and 12.00% above $10 million (2025 National MAP Survey).
That is a statement about the middle of each band rather than about every firm in it. A median of zero says at least half the firms that size recorded no departures for the year, and at small headcounts the ratio is a coarse instrument, which is one reason it belongs next to your other firm metrics rather than on its own.
So the national picture and the small-firm picture are not the same. If your firm sits in the smaller bands, the median firm your size did not report a departure in fiscal year 2024, and that is the baseline your own record should be measured against.
What Your Own Exit Records Answer That No Survey Can
Four readings of your own departures answer the question the national data cannot. Take everyone who has left in the last two years and pull all four, because each one alone is easy to misread.
Where They Went
Mark a destination for every leaver: another public accounting firm, a finance role in private industry, a job outside accounting, or retirement. That is close to the survey's set, but not identical to it. The survey does not separate a move into industry from any other career change, so your industry bucket sits inside its career-change share rather than beside it.
Read the two side by side rather than as like for like. A firm losing people to industry has a different problem from a firm losing people to the practice across town, and the two responses have almost nothing in common.
When They Resigned
Use the resignation date rather than the last day, because the last day is a notice period and the resignation is the decision. Plot those dates against your own filing calendar. Resignations landing in the weeks after a deadline point at what the season cost the person, while resignations landing before one usually mean the decision was made with somewhere else already lined up.
How Long They Had Been There
Tenure at exit tells you which step people are falling off. Departures inside the first year usually indict the hire or the onboarding rather than the job. Departures that cluster where staff step up to senior work say the step itself is the problem, and that is the same rung where the survey recorded its more significant pay increases (2025 National MAP Survey). The survey does not link the two, so treat that as a place to look and not as an explanation.
What Left With Them
For each exit, write down the work only that person could do: the clients who asked for them by name, the software nobody else configures, the review step that now queues. That list is the real cost of the departure, and it usually runs longer than the salary line it replaced. It also tells you which single resignation would hurt most next season, which is a question you can answer before it happens rather than after.
Questions Firms Ask About Why Accountants Are Quitting
Is Accounting a Declining Industry?
Not by employment. There were 1,579,800 accountant and auditor jobs in 2024, and employment is projected to grow 5% from 2024 to 2034, faster than the average for all occupations (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, accountants and auditors). A profession can grow and still be hard to staff, which is the combination these two datasets describe.
Is Burnout Why Accountants Are Quitting?
The departure data does not measure burnout. The survey records where people went rather than what they felt, so it has to be read from your own workload and review data rather than from the national split. What the burnout research actually measures is a separate question.
Did Higher Starting Salaries Stop the Departures?
The survey does not say. It reports the higher salaries and the departure reasons from the same fiscal year without linking them, so the honest reading is that firms responded on pay and the exits kept being recorded (2025 National MAP Survey).
Only One Person Left. Does Any of This Apply?
Yes, because these four readings work on a record rather than on a rate. A single departure still has a destination, a resignation date, a tenure and a list of work that left with it, and for a small firm those answer more than any national percentage will.
Start With the Exits You Already Recorded
The public data describes movement. It says that firms named three reasons at roughly equal rates, that the retirement share has climbed, and that pay rose sharply for people at the start of the career. It does not say why anyone left your firm, and it was never built to.
So do the one thing the national numbers cannot do for you. Take everyone who has left since your last two filing seasons, mark where they went, when they resigned, how long they had been there, and what left with them. That table takes an afternoon, and it tells you whether you are holding a retention problem, a succession problem, or a season that costs more than it earns.
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