Accounting Careers are Hot at Rank 2 According to College Board
"Hottest Careers for College Graduates:  Experts Predict Where the Jobs Will Be in 2018," College Board, December 30, 2010 ---
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/csearch/majors_careers/236.html

Government economists estimate which occupations will have the most job openings between 2008 and 2018. Openings occur because new jobs are created and because workers retire or leave the field for other reasons.

Check out these top 10 lists of occupations, sorted by the level of education typically required:

• Graduate degree
• Bachelor's degree
• Associate's degree or postsecondary vocational award

 

Occupations with the Most Job Openings: Graduate Degree

 

Occupation	Total Job Openings 2008–2018
Postsecondary teachers	553,000
Doctors and surgeons	261,000
Lawyers	240,000
Clergy	218,000
Pharmacists	106,000
Educational, vocational, and school counselors	94,000
Physical therapists	79,000
Medical scientists, except epidemiologists	66,000
Mental health and substance abuse social workers	61,000
Instructional coordinators	61,000

 

Occupations with the Most Job Openings: Bachelor's Degree

 

Occupation	Total Job Openings 2008–2018
Elementary school teachers, except special education	597,000
Accountants and auditors	498,000
Secondary school teachers, except special and vocational education	412,000
Middle school teachers, except special and vocational education	251,000
Computer systems analysts	223,000
Computer software engineers, applications	218,000
Network systems and data communications analysts	208,000
Computer software engineers, systems software	153,000
Construction managers	138,000
Market research analysts	137,000

 

Occupations with the Most Jobs Openings:  Associate's Degree or Postsecondary Vocational Award

 

Occupation	Total Job Openings 2008–2018
Registered nurses	1,039,000
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants	422,000
Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses	391,000
Computer support specialists	235,000
Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists	220,000
Automotive service technicians and mechanics	182,000
Preschool teachers, except special education	178,000
Insurance sales agents	153,000
Heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration technicians	136,000
Real estate sales agents	128,000

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

His wife is even for sale and marked down at that!
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on April 8, 2011

A Tax Man Takes Account of His Life
by: Laura Saunders
Apr 05, 2011
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
 

TOPICS: Accounting Education, Personal Taxation, Public Accounting, Tax Accounting, Tax Laws, Tax Planning, Taxation

SUMMARY: The article describes the lifestyle of Doug Stives, a CPA from Red Bank, NJ, who now can enjoy peak skiing season conditions out west after leaving his job as a partner at accounting firm The Curchin Group. His full-time position is now an accounting professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey. All of his accounting and tax practice work is now done as a self-employed contractor reporting on Schedule C.

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article is useful for a tax class discussing deductions , particularly on Schedule C, and for any class covering professional accounting work plans.

QUESTIONS: 
1. (Advanced) What type of income is reported on Schedule C as attached to U.S. Form 1040?

2. (Introductory) How did Mr. Stives's move from being a partner at an accounting firm to a position as an accounting professor and director of the MBA program at Monmouth University allow him to change reporting of his income on his U.S. Form 1040? Be specific.

3. (Introductory) How did that change in income reporting also change the deductibility of Mr. Stives's travel and other expenses?

4. (Advanced) How could the IRS challenge deductibility of Mr. Stives's travel expenses? Be specific in your description of the theory behind the potential issue.

5. (Advanced) Could you replicate Mr. Stives's approach immediately after college graduation? Explain your answer.

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

"A Tax Man Takes Account of His Life," by: Laura Saunders, The Wall Street Journal, April 5. 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703696704576222590253291266.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

In the thick of tax season, most certified public accountants are chained to their desks grinding out returns.

Doug Stives, a CPA from Red Bank, N.J., went skiing in Utah.

"I always dreamed of coming here for peak conditions," he said in mid-March between runs at Snowbasin Resort.

The trip is among the many perks that have accrued from his decision, in 2006, to become, in effect, The Most Tax-Efficient Man in America. The experiment has led to a new career, frequent travel and obsessive documentation of expenses, such as a $6 hot dog he recently bought in the Philadelphia airport.

The "aha" moment came to him, he says, after a college approached him about a teaching gig and he realized he could put into practice many of the tax strategies he had learned over the decades.

Step One was to change jobs. Mr. Stives had been a partner for 36 years at The Curchin Group, an accounting firm. By accepting an offer to teach tax and accounting courses full-time at the Leon Hess Business School of Monmouth University in New Jersey, he was able to tap into a broad array of tax-free employee benefits not available to him at the firm.

Step Two was the formation of Doug Stives LLC, the separate consulting business to which he attributes an impressive array of expenses. In general, people who are employees and have side businesses are often in the best position to maximize the tax code's benefits, say experts. Mr. Stives calls this "the best of all worlds."

The result, says Mr. Stives, is that while he earns less than 75% of his earlier pay, he takes home almost 90% as much. And he says he reaps another $40,000 a year in tax-free benefits from his college gig. Among other things, the school adds to his 401(k) contribution and provides tax-free, discounted health plans for Mr. Stives and his wife, plus disability insurance. As a partner in the accounting firm, he had to fund such expenses himself.

Not that all is perfect now. One peeve: dealing with what he calls "airline nonsense"—long lines, rising fees and canceled flights. But overall, he says, "my quality of life is so much higher."

His wife of 40 years, Elizabeth Stives, agrees. "We travel so much now for his business," she says. "Next is Lake Tahoe."

Mr. Stives, 64 years old, says he's too miserly to focus solely on maximizing deductions—a practice he calls a "rookie's mistake." In 2010, for example, he spotted a bonanza in "bonus depreciation" for large SUVs used in a business, but didn't need another car. "Sometimes my cheapness overcomes my love of tax savings," he says. "My wife will tell you I got her on sale."

Instead, he says, he uses the tax code's many quirks as the means through which he can live a fuller life.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#careers

Question
What's the most fun when you're on the road Tom Selling (even if your not exactly a "tax man")?

Answer Choices

1. The billings
2. The expense reimbursements
3. The tax deductions
4. The difference between the amounts in Answers 2 and 3 above

"A Tax Man Takes Account Of His Life CPA Lives Better, Works Less Thanks to Art of Deduction," by Laura Saunders, The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703696704576222590253291266.html?mod=WSJ_PersonalFinance_PF4

In the thick of tax season, most certified public accountants are chained to their desks grinding out returns.

Doug Stives, a CPA from Red Bank, N.J., went skiing in Utah.

"I always dreamed of coming here for peak conditions," he said in mid-March between runs at Snowbasin Resort.

The trip is among the many perks that have accrued from his decision, in 2006, to become, in effect, The Most Tax-Efficient Man in America. The experiment has led to a new career, frequent travel and obsessive documentation of expenses, such as a $6 hot dog he recently bought in the Philadelphia airport.

The "aha" moment came to him, he says, after a college approached him about a teaching gig and he realized he could put into practice many of the tax strategies he had learned over the decades.

Step One was to change jobs. Mr. Stives had been a partner for 36 years at The Curchin Group, an accounting firm. By accepting an offer to teach tax and accounting courses full-time at the Leon Hess Business School of Monmouth University in New Jersey, he was able to tap into a broad array of tax-free employee benefits not available to him at the firm.

Step Two was the formation of Doug Stives LLC, the separate consulting business to which he attributes an impressive array of expenses. In general, people who are employees and have side businesses are often in the best position to maximize the tax code's benefits, say experts. Mr. Stives calls this "the best of all worlds."

The result, says Mr. Stives, is that while he earns less than 75% of his earlier pay, he takes home almost 90% as much. And he says he reaps another $40,000 a year in tax-free benefits from his college gig. Among other things, the school adds to his 401(k) contribution and provides tax-free, discounted health plans for Mr. Stives and his wife, plus disability insurance. As a partner in the accounting firm, he had to fund such expenses himself.

Not that all is perfect now. One peeve: dealing with what he calls "airline nonsense"—long lines, rising fees and canceled flights. But overall, he says, "my quality of life is so much higher."

His wife of 40 years, Elizabeth Stives, agrees. "We travel so much now for his business," she says. "Next is Lake Tahoe."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Tom is probably not the best person to ask about this since I don't think he takes his wife on most of his many trips. However, back when I was consulting and/or making presentations all over the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, sometimes New Zealand and Asia I typically took my wife along for our expense-paid and/or tax-deductable holidays ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

I think I enjoyed these "holidays" more because they were tax deductible or they earned me a profit after expenses. I don't recall many away-from home adventures that were strictly out-of-pocket.

Question
What goes screaming down the highway with a long tail?

Answer
An ambulance being chased by hundreds of lawyers.

Especially note the chart in the following article
"Tamanaha: The Coming Crunch for Law Schools," by Paul Caron, Tax Prof Blog, June 29, 2011 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/

Following up on yesterday's post, NY Times -- The Lawyer Surplus, State by State: The Coming Crunch for Law Schools, by Brian Tamanaha (Washington U.):

The New York Times released a chart yesterday showing that law schools are churning out far more lawyers than the number of available legal positions. That is old news, of course. What's worse is that the oversupply promises to continue. ... Law schools now pump out about 45,000 graduates annually at a time when the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 28,000 new lawyer positions per year.

Why are law schools enrolling so many students when employment prospects for graduates are so poor? Because they must. In the past two decades law faculties have gotten bigger. AALS tallied 7,421 full time faculty in 1990, and 10,965 in 2008. Some of this overall increase comes from newly accredited schools, but most of it is faculty expansion: student-faculty ratios have been cut almost by half during this period.

Bigger faculties must be paid for through some combination of more bodies (J.D. and LL.M) and higher tuition. Tuition already goes up every year as it is, so the number of revenue paying students cannot be reduced substantially. It's that basic. ...

Law schools will soon suffer the consequences of this expansion. The chart below tracks the number of applicants against the number of first year students from 1990 to the present. As it shows, law schools exhibit a one-way ratchet: when applications drop, enrollment remains steady; when applications rise, enrollment goes up.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
It seems as though we're hitting times when there's an oversupply of workers in most every profession or trade, at least those that are legal. And one of the worst excess supply professions will now be the legal profession itself. Can the accounting profession be far behind --- having graduated more accountants in North America than at any other time in history?

The oversupply of law school graduates is especially troublesome since this is where humanities undergraduates typically headed after graduating with degrees in philosophy, history, art, music, English, etc. The other track for humanities graduates is in education, as k-12 schools and colleges facing budget crunches reduce tenure-track opportunities, an abundant supply of teachers is also outstripping demand.

And even the medical professions such as nursing are, for the first time in history, hitting oversupply walls to employment.

What should counselors and parents advise children about careers these days? Even the military won't be a great career option when we pull our fighting men and women back from foreign wars.

"A Degree of Practical Wisdom:: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduates’ Economic Viability," by Jim Chen, SSRN, December 3, 2011 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1967266

Abstract:     
This article evaluates the economic viability of a student’s decision to borrow money in order to attend law school. For individuals, firms, and entire nations, the ratio of debt to income serves as a measure of economic stability. The ease with which a student can carry and retire educational debt after graduation may be the simplest measure of educational return on investment.

Mortgage lenders evaluate prospective borrowers' debt-to-income ratios. The spread between the front-end and back-end ratios in mortgage lending provides a basis for extrapolating the maximum amount of educational debt that a student should incur. Any student whose debt service exceeds the maximum permissible spread between mortgage lenders' front-end and back-end ratios will not be able to buy a house on credit.

These measures of affordability suggest that the maximum educational back-end ratio (EBER) should fall in a range between 8 and 12 percent of monthly gross income. Four percent would be even better. Other metrics of economic viability in servicing educational debt suggest that the ratio of total educational debt to annual income (EDAI) should range from an ideal 0.5 to a marginal 1.5.

EBER and EDAI are mathematically related ways of measuring the same thing: a student's ability to discharge educational debt through enhanced earnings. This article offers guidance on the use of these debt-to-income ratios to assess the economic viability of students who borrow money in order to attend law school.

. . .

To offer good financial viability, defined as a ratio of education debt to annual income no greater than 0.5, post-law school salary must exceed annual tuition by a factor of 6 to 1. Adequate financial viability is realized when annual salary matches or exceeds three years of law school tuition. A marginal, arguably minimally acceptable level of financial viability requires a salary that is equal to two years’ tuition. The following table compares some tuition benchmarks with the salary needed to ensure the good, adequate, and marginal levels of financial viability identified in this article:

 

Jensen Comment
This type of study, in my viewpoint, has some relevancy for professional schools beyond the bachelors degree. However, I would not recommend this type of analysis for students contemplating where to go after high school. In the first four years, students get much more out of college than career opportunities. There are liberal education quality considerations, greatness of faculty considerations, socialization experiences, dating, dorm living, and intimacy often leading to marriage. Often more expensive schools have more to offer beyond the classroom experience. By the time students are more mature after graduation from college, the importance of some of these "extracurricular" experiences often diminishes.

And if we look at post-graduate law, medicine, engineering, and business schools, the job opportunities and salary expectations are not independent of the halo effect of where the candidate graduated. Diplomas from Harvard and Yale Law Schools add a great deal to salary expectations. And there are huge advantages of being able to network with alumni who often pave the way for job opportunities. What I'm saying is going to a law school having a tuition of $60,000 may well be worth it to graduates who take full advantage of the "extracurricular" opportunities such as networking with alumni. And for all practical purposes you can never be a U.S. Supreme Court justice unless you either graduated from Harvard or Yale law schools or were on the faculty at one of those law schools.

In other words, if you can swing it go to Yale Law school rather than UCON (sorry Amy).

EGADS. I'm a snob.

Over 45,000 lawyer jobs in the United States were lost since the 2008 economic meltdown
Should we break out the Champagne? (just kidding)

"Law Firm Recruiting Volumes Inch Up, Making Modest Gains After Recession-Era Declines," NALP, 2012 ---
http://www.nalp.org/uploads/PerspectivesonFall2011.pdf

Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

Going Concern's Admittedly Unscientific 2012 Survey of Starting Salaries for New Accounting Graduates ---
http://goingconcern.com/post/recruiting-season-public-accounting-salaries-starting-class-2013

Jensen Comment
Keep in mind that cost of living varies.
When I was still teaching it was somewhat easier to get a Big Four starting job in San Francisco relative to San Antonio. In San Francisco the salary would hardly pay for a one-room apartment without partnering to share the rent. Starting salaries are often not fully adjusted for higher cost-of-living cities.

Also I will mention my oft-repeated advice to college graduates. The amount of starting salary should be a low priority relative to prospective employer training, exposure to clients who are often the way career tracks head after a year or two with a CPA firm, opportunities in areas of interest such as tax or IT, and opportunities for international transfer (e.g., to Asia), and expected travel requirements (tough for expecting parents), and opportunity for work at home (great for expecting parents).

CPA firms do not offer high enough salaries for entry-level auditing and tax to attract graduates from prestigious MBA programs. These firms do not hire many such MBA graduates and when they do hire these graduates at higher salaries it is generally for consulting rather than auditing and tax. CPA firms generally want consultants who have considerable on-the-job training and special skills such as IT and language skills.

Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

"Tax Professionals Will Continue To Be in Great Demand for Years," by Frank Byrt, AccountingWeb, March 3, 2013 ---
 http://www.accountingweb.com/article/tax-professionals-will-continue-be-great-demand-years/221256?source=education