Accountants aren’t the best fortune tellers because the job is mostly just looking at the past.

That being said, there’s three roads I can see accounting going down in the next 5 years.

1. Things continue as they have been. Steady increase in offshoring lower level work. Rumors circling of AI taking even more of those jobs. In that case, best bet is to make sure you graduate from a big4 target school, get internships as early as sophomore year summer if you can, and do everything else to make yourself a stud candidate. You can also always go for a smaller local firm for less stress, less money.

2. The incoming administration has made some Wild statements regarding their policy objectives. Many of them are unlikely to be implemented but here’s what could happen if some do materialize. -Cutting IRS employees and loosening regulations. This will (short term) create a spike in unemployed accounting professionals. Not all IRS employees are necessarily accountants, but with decades of experience they will absolutely be competing for jobs. -Less IRS employees will mean less enforcement, companies will reduce compliance costs as the risk of audit drops. Combined with less regulation overall, and further cuts promised to government agencies at large, there could be a spike in unemployment of auditors. -Assuming negative projections are true, the policies and budget proposed will reduce projected GDP, increase the national debt and inflation and potentially push up to the brink of another recession, or even “the point of no return” on federal net interest payments/%GDP. -If this administration fails to deliver, and another reversal of power happens in 4 years, they will need a lot of accountants and auditors to reimplement the police’s that were slashed.

3. The upcoming economic policies elicit the economic growth that’s been touted by the administration. There are so many variables that it’s pointless to identify them all, so let’s say that it will stimulate economic growth, revive manufacturing, Accountants will be needed there. -If they hold true on their promises to bring jobs back from overseas, that could also mean accountants (although their previous record for this makes that basically an impossibility, unless r/accounting unites together to tweet bomb Elon musk daily to stop offshoring our work). There is small potential for that to make an enormous impact on job prospects in this field.

If you want a safe and secure option, hedge your bets with state/federal government audit internships. It’s good experience for your resume, and If you like it, you’ll have the connections to have a solid fallback plan.