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KPMG is laying off 330 employees in its US audit business because too few people were leaving on their own, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
KPMG has been shedding jobs over the last couple of years after bulking up staff during the pandemic. Audit layoffs in March were preceded by layoffs of around 5% and 2% of US staff in 2023. The new layoffs will affect about 4% of the firm’s roughly 9,000 auditing staff in weeks to come.
The cuts come despite the growth in its audit revenue—which grew to 6% in its Sept. 30 fiscal year—and plans to expand its audit business in the US, according to the WSJ.
Big Four, big cuts. KPMG’s layoffs are the most recent in a string of layoffs by large accounting firms in the past two years. PwC cut about 1,800 employees, or 2.5% of its workforce, including some auditing staff, from its US business in September. It was the firm’s first round of formal layoffs since 2009. Deloitte laid off 1,200 workers, according to CPA Practice Advisor, and EY 3,000 in April 2023. However, most of these layoffs have involved advisory rather than auditing personnel, according to the WSJ, because clients forgo those services before auditing.
Don’t blame the robots? Big Four firms have been using artificial intelligence in their auditing work, although KPMG said AI wasn’t related to the layoffs, the WSJ reported. But a recent survey by Source Global Research found that nearly six US and British companies expect that AI will lead their auditors to employ fewer college-educated workers, the WSJ reported.
“Technology is going to replace some of these people’s work,” Source CEO Fiona Czerniawska told the WSJ.