Monday, February 10, 2014, 12:20pm
2014 will be the year of the accountant, according to new information released this week by the staffing firm Randstad.
The Greater Boston area is a particular hotbed of opportunity for accountants, accounting managers and public accountants, said Chris Martin, senior vice president of enterprise solutions at Randstad Professionals.
Randstad used several different metrics to determine its “hot jobs” of 2014. Feedback from the firm’s own internal recruiting force, market trends and projections for the year ahead helped, but the firm also uses a tool called Wanted Analytics to look at job postings.
According to Martin, finance and accounting jobs in the Greater Boston area have grown 55 percent over the past four years. Year-over-year, those jobs have increased 22 percent. The banking and finance industry and consulting industry in particular are expected to be doing the most hiring in these areas.
Boston is the number five employer of finance and accounting talent nationwide, and those skill sets command a higher-than-average salary in Boston, too. For example, a public accountant or internal auditor’s salary averages $69,500 nationwide, but in the Greater Boston area, somebody with that job could expect to make closer to $78,000.
“I think the biggest difference is the competition for the talent,” Martin said. “Because Boston has such a large concentration of employers and is one of the country’s larger markets for employers, the demand for specialized talent makes companies pay a little more.”
Martin added that for senior accounting positions, there are typically three postings per active job seeker. For public accounting positions, there are closer to six postings per active job seeker.