For the Most Part, Accountants Aren’t Too Frustrated About Their Salaries

Despite posts made by accountants on sites like r/accounting and Fishbowl about their salaries not being high enough, those who work in professional services—which includes accountants—don’t complain about their pay as much as employees of other industries, according to a new report by USA Today.

A team of writers at USA Today analyzed more than 3 million Glassdoor reviews of 500 large employers in 25 industries to uncover which sectors have the most frustrated workers when it comes to their compensation.

To establish negative sentiment about compensation, mentions of “pay,” “salary,” “compensation,” and “money” were counted in the cons section of employee reviews for each employer. And to establish the frequency of negative mentions, the team of writers divided the total mentions of those four keywords by the number of reviews of a given employer. This established their “mentions per review” metric.

Of the 25 industries, professional services ranked 14th in rate of pay frustration with 0.125 mentions per review and a cumulative score of 2% less mentions of poor pay than average. In contrast, the No. 1 industry with the most pay frustration is education with 0.204 mentions per review and 60% more mentions of poor pay than average. The industry that has the least frustration about pay, ranked No. 25, is pharma and biotechnology with 0.075 mentions per review and 42% less mentions of poor pay than average.

Out of the 500 companies reviewed, employees of Google, In-N-Out Burger, Meta, Novartis, and Amazon are the least likely to complain about pay, according to the study. No professional services firms made the top 10 companies with the fairest pay.