AI hits jobs for consultants, graduates – but is good news for engineers

Here’s what AI means for PwC: fewer consultants, fewer graduate student roles – but more engineers. 

The accountancy giant said four years ago that it planned to invest $12 billion to hire 100,000 people over the next five years. At the time, PwC said those roles would focus on climate, diversity reporting and AI. 

Well, in the US, DEI and climate goals have been smacked down by the Trump administration, while the latter technology arrived two years later to spark a run of job cuts. (And there was the whole Evergrande debacle in China, too.)

So it’s no surprise that late last month PwC dropped its 100,000 hiring target. Instead, over the past year it slashed 5,600 jobs to 365,000 – with the FT suggesting it was about 30,000 jobs off the original goal. 

“When we made the plans to hire that many people, the world looked very, very different,” Global Chairman Mohamed Kande told the BBC in an interview. 

“Now we have artificial intelligence,” he said, though he stressed the recent round of cuts wasn’t attributable to AI. “We want to hire, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the same level of people that we hire – it will be a different set of people.”

The BBC report said Kande believes that advising companies on using AI will be core to its future – but at the same time, companies will be able to use AI to manage some of the work that consultancies such as PwC used to do for them. 

What happens when you don’t hire grads? 

In September, PwC said it was cutting 200 entry-level graduate roles to a still robust 1,300, pinning the blame on a struggling economy, but also mentioning the looming impact of AI.

“AI is reshaping roles, global markets remain volatile, and graduate intakes everywhere are under pressure,” wrote Marco Amitrano, Alliance Senior Partner for the UK and Middle East, in a LinkedIn post. “At PwC, our entry-level numbers are lower this year, reflecting the wider slowdown in investment, hiring and deal-making across the economy.”

That trend has been seen across the big consultancy players: KPMG shrunk its graduate recruitment scheme by 29%, Deloitte’s was cut by 18% and EY’s is down by 11%, according to one report. The report also noted that job search site Indeed shows a 44% decline in graduate jobs in the accountancy sector versus 2023. 

On one hand, this makes sense: if there are fewer roles for consultants in the future, it makes little sense to hire them on as graduates to train them up for work that won’t be there.

But it leaves younger people in a precarious position regarding their careers. A report from Stanford University suggests younger people are the hardest hit by AI when it comes to jobs, with fewer entry-level roles opening up. The comparatively easy work done by graduates may be the easiest to automate with AI, but it’s also how companies develop young people’s skills and train them up to become consultants. 

If younger generations have no way of starting in an industry, consultancy or otherwise, it’s hard to imagine where companies expect their more advanced employees to evolve from. 

Good news for engineers, at least

So the rise of AI might mean a decrease in consultants. But while that’s bad news for them, PwC said it would be replacing consultants with another set of roles: engineers. 

“We are looking for hundreds and hundreds of engineers today to help us drive our AI agenda, but we just cannot find them,” Kande told the BBC. 

Engineers, it’s your time – to finally get paid more than consultants. 

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