With the regional and national unemployment rate for accountants at 2.9 percent and industrywide raises above 3 percent annually, a recent Robert Half staffing and salary survey found it is a good time to ride herd on the ledgers.
“This is on a par with what we saw in ”™06-”™07,” said Adam Samples, regional president with Robert Half. “We”™re seeing increasingly strong demand for professional-level positions. Right now, the economy is heavily weighted toward demand for top-shelf talent.”
Samples is a transplanted Californian with 10 years in the Westchester-Fairfield market for Robert Half, a publicly traded staffing firm that specializes in the fields of finance and accounting, with annual revenues of $5 billion. He splits his time between offices in Stamford and White Plains.
As demand for accountants builds, the most desired subset contains accountants with information technology backgrounds. “That”™s a hybrid in high demand,” he said.
Samples said the national business push to the Sun Belt comes now in a nuanced form. “A lot of companies will move to a lower-cost site” ”“ he cited the Carolinas as an example ”“ “but they will keep their finance and accounting here. In fact, a lot of companies will be drawn here because we have the talent. From central New Jersey through Fairfield County, we”™re sitting in, arguably, the capital of the world for accounting and financial services.”
The Robert Half report”™s “corporate accounting” section revealed the salaries for CFOs of companies posting sales above $500 million topped out at $284,000 to $449,000 in 2014. That cohort”™s figure rose 3.3 percent this year to $291,250 to $465,750. Those company CFOs at the smaller end of the survey ”“ company sales up to $50 million annually ”“ did proportionately about the same, seeing a 3.2 percent increase in earnings this year to $105,250 to $151,750, from $101,000 to $148,000 last year.
Company treasurers”™ pay performed on par with the CFOs.
A company posting sales above $500 million saw peak treasurer pay reach a range of $283,000 to $437,750 in 2014. It went up 3.3 percent this year to the $291,000 to $453,750 range.
For companies with less than $50 million in sales the range for treasurers went from $100,750 to $137,250 in 2014 to $103,250 to $141,750 for 2015, a rise of 2.9 percent.
Other Robert Half corporate pay-scale breakdowns included for vice president for finance, where pay raises year over year were in the 3.1 percent to 3.3 percent pay-raise range; director of finance in the 3.2 percent to 3.3 percent pay-raise range; and director of accounting, where pay raises were either 3.1 percent or 3.2 percent.
One change, according to Samples: “With current talent inventory levels, we are telling our clients they have to come around on salaries as well as on schedules, a healthy match for 401Ks ”“ which all but dried up in the recession ”“ and bonuses.”
