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- Accounting clerks: skills opportunities and challenges (2023 update)
Accounting clerks: skills opportunities and challenges (2023 update)
Summary
Accounting clerks are one of the largest occupations in the EU. They fulfill a variety of roles in bookkeeping, compiling accounts and financial data, taking care of cash transactions, and keeping business-related records. Accounting clerks are occupied across almost all economic sectors but are mostly concentrated in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, and transportation and storage sectors. Jobs within this group include payroll clerks, accounting and bookkeeping clerks, and mortgage clerks.
Key facts
- Around 6 million people were employed as accounting clerks in 2022, accounting for around three per cent of total EU employment.
- Employment remained relatively stable between 2012 and 2019. This masks a decline of about 250 thousand workers between 2013 to 2015 and a subsequent recovery by 2019.
- Between 2019 and 2020, during which the EU experienced economic lockdowns, almost 900 thousand accounting clerk jobs were lost. By the end of 2022, employment was still almost 700 thousand workers short of pre Covid-19 level.
- Most accounting clerks (a combined 58 per cent) are employed in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, and transportation and storage sectors. These sectors were at the forefront of the economic recovery after the financial crisis, but their activities were significantly impacted by recent developments such as the energy crisis.
- Nearly two-thirds of accounting clerks (61 per cent) had attained a qualification level of ISCED 3 and 4 in 2021, equivalent to the education level achieved after completing upper secondary education. The qualification level of the occupation is not expected to change over the period to 2035.
- Accounting clerks are almost equally divided in terms of gender (51 per cent men and 49 per cent women in 2021).
- Accounting clerk employment is projected to decrease by 12.5 per cent between 2022 and 2035.
- By 2035 about 5.5 million people are projected to be working as accounting clerks. This underestimates the true level of employment demand. An estimated 2.9 million people will be needed to replace those who are expected to leave the occupation - mainly as a result of retirement. Accounting for the projected decline in employment, an estimated 2.1 million job openings will need to be filled between 2022 and 2035.
- The adoption of new technologies - including fintech and cloud computing processes such as e-invoicing – and the increase in financial transaction complexity eliminate repetitive tasks and drive changes in the skills required of accounting clerks in the future. On the other hand, sustainability concerns force companies to measure their environmental footprint through carbon accounting.
Employment and job demand
Employment trends accounting clerks were similar to all clerical support workers in the past decade. Larger employment drops, such as the one during the Covid-19 pandemic, were compensated by faster recovery in the growth years.
Figure 1: Year-to-year employment change for accounting clerks (2013-2022)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Employed persons by detailed occupation (ISCO-08 two digit level) [LFSA_EGAI2D__custom_7778289]. Own calculations.
About two thirds (62 per cent) of accounting clerks are engaged as material-recording and transport clerks. These are workers who keep records of goods produced, purchased, stocked and dispatched, and of materials needed at specified production dates, or keep records of operational aspects and coordinate the timing of passenger and freight transport. They also perform miscellaneous other tasks such as helping with the preparation and checking of production operation schedules.
Around a third of accounting clerks (37 per cent) are engaged as numerical clerks. People employed in these jobs obtain, compile and compute accounting, bookkeeping, statistical, financial and other numerical data, and take charge of cash transactions incidental to business matters.
Over time the share of employment accounted for by these two occupations has remained relatively stable.
Figure 2: Employment in accounting clerk jobs (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
In the OJAs, numerical clerks - such as those working in accounting, finance or insurance areas - are more frequently requested than material-recording and transport clerks. Part of this development can be explained by the slowly growing employment share of numerical clerks to those in material and transport areas, while also the job turnover in numerical clerks jobs is higher, forcing employers to post vacancies more often than in the case of material and transport clerks.
For more details on skills demand and job openings for this occupation, please access the Cedefop’s Skills OVATE tool.
Figure 3: Online job advertisements for accounting clerks (2022, in %)
Source: Skills in Online Job Advertisements indicator based on Cedefop’s Skills OVATE. Own calculations. Note: Online job advertisements are by definition not equivalent to job vacancies. See Beręsewicz (2021) or Napierala et al. (2022).
More than half of accounting clerks are occupied in three sectors, namely manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade and transportation and storage. A fair share of accounting clerks is also occupied in the professional, scientific and technical activities sector (which remained the same between 2016 and 2021) and in financial and insurance activities, which however decreased between 2016 and 2021. The remaining 22 per cent of employed accounting clerks are distributed across various sectors.
Figure 4: The top sectors employing accounting clerks (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
As regards the share of accounting clerks within sectoral employment, these workers appear to be a significant part of the workforce in the financial and insurance activities and the transportation and storage sectors. In 2021, 7 per cent of employment in financial and insurance activities and 10 per cent of employment in transportation and storage were accounting clerks.
The share of accounting clerks’ employment is the highest in Estonia, Czechia and Slovakia, and also relatively high in central and western parts of the EU.
Figure 5: Accounting clerks as a share of overall country employment (2021, in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
Note: Data for CY, EE, IS, LV and LU have lower reliability because of the small sample size. LFS data for MT are not available.
The workforce is comprised almost equally of both genders. In 2016 women were the majority (54 per cent) compared to men (46 per cent). By 2021, the share of male employment had slightly surpassed that of women (51 per cent versus 49 per cent).
Accounting clerks are currently relatively aged compared to the average across all occupations, but not markedly so (Figure 6). In 2016, 29 per cent of accounting clerks were aged 50 to 64 years compared to 23 per cent across all occupations. In 2021 the share of accounting clerks in this age group was slightly increased to 30 per cent while that across all occupations increased by six percentage points to 28 per cent.
Figure 6: Accounting clerks workforce by age (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
The nature of clerical jobs is usually related to full-time, permanent occupation. This is reflected in the percentage of workers employed on temporary contracts which was slightly lower than the average across all occupations (see Figure 7).
Figure 7: Contract and hiring trends for accounting clerks (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
Skill needs and future trends
Accounting clerks put a relatively lower focus on innovative, interpersonal, manual, and literacy skills as compared to all occupations on average. While, digital tasks are a significant part of their work, from using digital devices to working with specific job-related software. Overall, both general and digital upskilling is needed among accounting clerks almost as much as all occupations on average. People report of having job security, although job satisfaction is lower than all occupations average.
Figure 8: Skills, training needs and job perception of accounting clerks (in %)
Source: European Skills and Jobs Survey. Microdata. Own calculations. Unless stated otherwise, it is a share of people reporting that a task/skill is part of their job.
*Always or often
** Share of workers reporting these needs to a great or moderate extent.
Cedefop’s Skills forecast provides a detailed view of the future demand for accounting clerks. Overall, employment for accounting clerks workers is expected to decline somewhat over the period 2022 to 2035. This will result in employment levels reducing to less than those of 2011, a decade ago.
There will however be countries in which employment is expected to increase. Employment in 10 countries grew in the past decade and it is forecast to do so in the next decade as well. Ireland and Romania are among those with the highest past and expected future growths, while especially France, Denmark and Iceland represent the opposite trend.
Figure 9: Past and expected future employment trend of accounting clerks
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Cedefop Skills Forecast.
Note: Data for CY, EE, IS, LV and LU have lower reliability because of the small sample size. LFS data for MT are not available.
New job creation or job destruction is, however, not the main driver behind job demand. Most job openings are a result of people leaving them for other opportunities, or those leaving the labour market completely (retirements; parent leave and such). For accounting clerks, replacement demand is quite substantial, as it is estimated at 2.9 million (Figure 10).
Overall, when future job destruction is added to replacement demand, an estimated 2.1 million job openings for accounting clerks will need to be filled between 2022 and 2035.
Figure 10: Future job openings for accounting clerks (000s)
Source: Future job openings indicator based on the Cedefop Skills Forecast. Own calculations.
About 61 per cent of accounting clerks held medium-level qualifications in 2021 (i.e. at ISCED levels 3 or 4). This is not projected to change much by 2035 (56 per cent). On the other hand, the share of workers with low levels of qualification (ISCED level 2 or lower) is projected to fall by 4 per cent while the share of highly qualified workers (i.e. those qualified at ISCED level 5 and over) is projected to increase by 9 per cent.
Looking forward
The skills required for accounting clerks have changed considerably in recent years due to technological change, professionalisation of the occupation that prompts continuous up-skilling needs, and, recently, the effects of pandemic in work arrangements. These drivers are expected to continue reshaping job tasks and skills:
- According to latest Cedefop and WEF research, technological developments and digitalisation will continue to impact accounting clerks, as advanced numeracy skills and routine tasks are prone to automation. The adoption of new technologies decreased the demand for data entry, bookkeeping and payroll, as well as material-recording and stock-keeping clerks. At the same time, the demand for high-cognitive skills like reasoning, complex problem-solving and communication has increased in the past decade (OECD, 2019). This will not lead to extensive job losses, as based on Cedefop’s recent findings, only around 6 per cent of accounting clerks are facing high automation risk within the EU. However, the human-in-command principle may reflect on the pace of future digitalisation. For instance, a Finnish study raises the issue of customer-driven inertia, which refers to a reluctance of accounting professionals’ clients to engage in fully digitalised accounting (Rauramo, 2021). This has extensions for the tasks performed by accounting clerks. Cedefop research forecasts that future job openings will mostly require either high or medium level of education.
- Developments in digital technologies that apply to the financial industry (so called ‘fintech’) are already increasing the demand for several forms of digital skills. This holds for all employees in the sector, accounting clerks included. Jobs like “finance assistant” will require heavy analytical skills, finance-related knowledge, and ability to command several bookkeeping software. Strong numeracy skills obtained through, e.g., a degree in accounting, will be a must.
- The rise of cloud computing technologies in accounting not only calls for training in technologies such as e-invoicing (see here for training programmes hosted by the Commission about e-invoicing compliant with European standards) but also raises cybersecurity threats and prompts more emphasis on ensuring data security. Accounting clerks may be directly responsible for taking care of client and company data and enforcing security operations.
“Aside from digital spreadsheet skills, you’ll need knowledge of information systems and software to strengthen your services for clients. With the right accounting software, you can organise financial data and easily create the necessary documents and statements for clients. Creating these statements digitally using accounting software will take you a fraction of the time it would to do so manually.” Source: Counting up (2021) |
- The everyday workload of accounting jobs, including that of accounting clerks, is highly affected from changing regulation. Tax Law changes such as shifting trade and tariff policies are affected by ongoing globalisation, while accounting standards in many countries are frequently updated to be aligned with EU requirements and latest developments. Thus, regulatory changes are among the top challenges for accounting jobs and put a continuous training pressure on these workers.
- Increasing complexity in financial transactions stemming from the large amount of data that must be processed to prepare financial statements puts pressure on accounting assistants. Data can come from many different sources and concern for example, different document types of currencies, and this makes it difficult to reconcile. This creates the need for additional technical training but also for soft management skills to accommodate complex workload.
- Sustainability concerns and moves towards circular business models affect the sectors where many accounting clerks work. For example, manufacturing is one of the sectors with highest shares of developing green jobs. Although different occupations within this sector will experience a stronger degree of task and skill change, such as production managers and directors, recent research argues that accounting clerks will still have to adapt to the general trends. This implies the need to keep up to date with changes in regulation to adapt to greener practices. An additional need for skills update is the rise in financial carbon accounting within businesses. This is a methodology that allows businesses to measure, track and report past and future greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted through their business operations and assign to them a financial market value (Ascui and Lovel, 2012). It allows businesses to track emission reduction potential but can also reveal possible competitive advantages, for example in building brand equity, and is currently emerging as a distinct discipline in accounting professions (He et al., 2022).
- The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital skills even more. According to latest Cedefop research, knowledge of digital skills allowed workers in many occupations, including clerical workers, to shift to remote working “basically overnight”. As remote work becomes more frequent in the years to come, accounting clerks will need to acquire more and more advanced digital skills to adapt to a new hybrid form of working.
- Many accounting clerks work in the wholesale & retail sector, which has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The prospects for change in the aftermath of the global pandemic are influenced by multiple factors. While customer-facing, low-skilled, and temporary jobs in the sector were particularly at risk of redundancy or temporary layoffs (Eurostat, 2020), the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns changed the sector as a whole.
Accounting clerks will need new skills to remain relevant in a future market that will need less of them. According to recent Cedefop estimates, about 128 million adults in the EU-28, Iceland and Norway are either low-educated, have low digital skills, low cognitive skills or are medium-high educated at risk of skill loss and obsolescence, such as the accounting clerks. Although many of their main skills and tasks are more automatable than the average, the risk of total redundancy is mitigated by the opportunities provided for re- and up-skilling through lifelong learning tools such as apprenticeships and micro-credentials (Cedefop, 2020a).
Most accounting clerks enter the workforce with vocational qualification at ISCED levels 3 and 4. According to Cedefop in 2019 and 2020 60 per cent of accounting clerks aged 15-34 reported possession of a vocational qualification. This means both initial vocational education and training (IVET) continuing vocational education and training (CVET) schemes and programmes (such as apprenticeships) have large potential in assisting to train future clerks adequately and reskill and upskill existing clerks to accommodate emerging demand for skills.
- According to anecdotal evidence, quite many finance and accounting managers are concerned about keeping valued employees. These include accounting and finance roles in sectors related to technology, health care, property management, financial services, but also positions that keep cash accounts strong such as billing, accounts receivable and collections. Continued education and training helps accountants to acquire the technical and soft skills that are crucial to retain their jobs in an environment where more transactional tasks are automated.
- Traineeships are particularly important for securing that middle-skilled occupations such as accounting clerks acquire the necessary skills to face new challenges. In this example provided by the German company Steuerteam Gmbh, tax clerk trainees learn how to efficiently complete tasks related to accounting, payroll accounting and sales tax returns using different programs and electronic data processing.
Accounts clerk (apprenticeship) At this insurance subsidiary of the Renault Group, the accounts clerk apprentices are trained to handle business related to protection insurance. Their job responsibilities include daily transactions, managing invoices, bank transfers and other technical accounting tasks. While proficiency in digital tools, like the Office suite is expected of applicants, it is equally important to have transversal skills. These include interpersonal skills, self-motivation, ability to prioritize and work independently while managing one’s own time. Source: RCI Insurance, Malta. |
- The rise in carbon accounting with businesses has created the need for adequate training on all levels within businesses’ financial accounting offices. Erasmus+ programmes developed for raising awareness and developing related skills include CF Train in VET, which aims to train future professionals in sustainable skills based on the concept of Carbon Footprint calculation and reduction, and ClicksOn, which is targeted towards secondary school students and aims to raise awareness on climate issues and carbon accounting and harmonize and share at the European level educational materials, experiences and practices related to the climate emergency and carbon accounting.
- According to Cedefop, micro-credentials consist of short learning activities provided to meet a variety of needs, such as specific professional development needs, ad hoc needs to close skills gaps and update skills, and internal company training and career development. The European Commission recognises them as a flexible and targeted way to help people develop the knowledge, skills and competences they need for their personal and professional development. Such short training courses can assist accounting clerks into securing competences such as use of digital tools (e-invoicing, cloud computing, remote work platforms), new regulation and standards, and management and organisation skills. This knowledge can provide these workers with more security about their future work prospects and perhaps pave the way for pursuing further qualification upgrade.
Accounting, Auditing and Financial Management in the Public and Social Profit Sector (10 ECTS micro-credential) This micro-credential with a sectoral focus is offered at Ghent University, and aims to initiate students in the reformed accounting systems of Belgian governmental and non-profit organisations due to New Public Management Reforms while also providing basic training in financial analysis. By completing the micro-credit, students will be able to interpret and compare accounting standards, apply financial instruments, master basic techniques of financial analysis, evaluate governmental accounting framework, and understand auditing processes. Source: University of Ghent, Belgium |
Training for accounting clerks should consider three major target groups: the older workers, who should be able to get acquainted with new trends; the new entrants, who will need both these skills on top of the typical clerical and administrative ones; as well as workers that lost their job as clerks due to skills obsolescence or the pandemic and seek ways to secure a new job.
How to cite this publication:
Cedefop (2023). Accounting clerks: skills opportunities and challenges. Skills intelligence data insight.
Further reading
Ascui, F., & Lovell, H. (2012). Carbon accounting and the construction of competence. Journal of Cleaner Production, 36, 48-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.015.
Beręsewicz, M. and Pater, R. (2021). Inferring job vacancies from online job advertisements, Luxembourg: Publications Office, 2021. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-statistical-working-papers/-/ks-tc-20-008
Cedefop (2019). Machines, robots and the threat of automation to EU jobs, blog article.
Cedefop (2020a). Empowering adults through upskilling and reskilling pathways. Volume 2: Cedefop analytical framework for developing coordinated and coherent approaches to upskilling pathways for low-skilled adults. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Cedefop reference series; No 113. http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/61322.
Cedefop (2020b). Occupation in focus: accounting clerks. Cedefop Skillset and Match, Vol.19, May 2020.
Cedefop (2022). Microcredentials for labour market education and training: first look at mapping microcredentials in European labour-market-related education, training and learning: take-up, characteristics and functions. Luxembourg: Publications Office. Cedefop research paper, No 87. http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/351271
Cedefop (2023). Skills in transition: the way to 2035. Luxembourg: Publications Office. http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/438491
Cedefop (2021). Digital skills: Challenges and opportunities. Skills intelligence data insight. 22 February 2021.
Cedefop et al. (2021). Apprenticeship governance and in-company training: where labour market and education meet: Cedefop community of apprenticeship experts: short papers, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Cedefop working paper No. 3.
He, R, Luo, L., Shamsuddin, A, & Tang, Q. (2022). Corporate carbon accounting: a literature review of carbon accounting research from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement. Accounting and Finance, 62, 261-298. https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.12789.
Napierala, J.; Kvetan, V. and Branka, J. (2022). Assessing the representativeness of online job advertisements. Luxembourg: Publications Office. Cedefop working paper, No 17. http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/807500
OECD (2019). OECD Skills Strategy.
Pouliakas, K., & Branka, J. (2020) EU jobs at highest risk of Covid-19 social distancing: Is the pandemic exacerbating the labour market divide? Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, Cedefop working paper; No 1.
Rauramo, P. (2021). Perceived effects of digitalization on accounting profession and identity of accounting professionals: A field study in Finnish accounting firms and departments. Master’s Thesis at Aalto University School of Business.
Valero, A., Li, J., Muller, S., Riom, C., Nguyen-Tien, V., & Draca, M. (2021). Are ‘green’ jobs good jobs? How lessons from the experience to-date can inform labour market transitions of the future. London: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
World Economic Forum (2020). The Future of Jobs Report. October 2020.
Data insights details
Table of contents
Page 1
SummaryPage 2
Employment and job demandPage 3
Skill needs and future trendsPage 4
Looking forwardPage 5
Further reading