What Can You Do With an Accounting Degree? 6 Jobs Ranked by Pay

What can you do with an accounting degree? Keep an organization's books, check them from outside, tax them, examine the institutions that hold other people's money, or eventually run the department that produces the numbers. The six accounting degree jobs differ most in one respect: how directly BLS ties each one to accounting. That tie tells you how much of an edge the major gives you over other business graduates applying for the same role.

• Accountants and auditors: a bachelor's in accounting or a related field, such as business. This is the core job, and accounting is the standard route in.
• Tax examiners, collectors and revenue agents: a bachelor's in accounting or a related field. At the IRS, revenue agents generally need an accounting major, its equivalent, or a CPA certificate, so the major is decisive for that role.
• Financial examiners: a bachelor's that includes some accounting coursework. The coursework is required, and a CPA helps with senior roles.
• Budget analysts: a bachelor's in business, social science, psychology or math, with accounting coursework described as helpful. The major is an edge here, not a requirement.
• Financial and investment analysts: a bachelor's in finance or a related field, such as business. An accounting degree qualifies you, and you compete with finance majors for the same roles.
• Financial managers: a bachelor's plus five years or more in a related job, with accountant among the examples BLS gives. This is the destination, and accounting is a named route in.

Read top to bottom, the list runs from jobs built around the accounting major to jobs where it is one qualifying degree among several. That order matters when you apply. For the first three, the accounting coursework is what the employer screens for. For budget and financial analyst roles, the degree gets you considered alongside finance, economics and general business graduates, and your internships and spreadsheet skills do the rest.

Here are the six accounting degree jobs sorted by national median wage, with the two accounting jobs that need no bachelor's degree at the bottom for comparison. The growth column shows how much BLS expects employment in each job to change between 2025 and 2035; the average across all occupations is 3.5 percent. The openings column is the yearly average of positions BLS expects employers to fill, which counts replacements for people who retire or switch fields as well as brand-new jobs.

Pay and hiring volume point in nearly opposite directions. Accountants and auditors rank fifth of the six on pay, yet they open about 115,300 positions a year, more than the other five accounting degree jobs combined, which together open about 102,100. Financial examiners and budget analysts both out-earn accountants at the median, and between them they open about 7,400 positions a year. If you want the largest number of doors, the core accounting job is it by a wide margin.

The bottom two rows are the reason to read this table as a set. Neither tax preparers nor bookkeeping clerks need a bachelor's degree, and both earn less at the median than all six jobs above them. The section on automation below explains why the two groups are also heading in different directions.

The biggest of the accounting degree jobs is really a family of careers. BLS describes six kinds of accountants and auditors, and every one of them is counted, and paid, under the same federal occupation code:

• Public accountants handle accounting, auditing, tax and consulting work for corporations, governments, nonprofits and individuals. Some concentrate on tax. Others specialize in forensic accounting, investigating fraud, embezzlement and bankruptcies, often alongside lawyers and law enforcement.
• Management accountants, also called cost, corporate, industrial, managerial or private accountants, prepare budgets and financial information for a company's own managers rather than for the public.
• Government accountants keep and examine the records of government agencies, and audit the businesses and individuals those agencies regulate or tax.
• External auditors review an organization's financial statements from the outside and report whether they were prepared correctly.
• Internal auditors do similar work from inside the organization they audit, looking for waste, fraud and financial risk.
• Information technology auditors review the controls on an organization's IT systems so the data moving through them can be trusted.

Because BLS pays all of these under one code, it publishes no separate federal wage for a forensic accountant, a tax accountant or an IT auditor. A specialty salary you see quoted elsewhere comes from a private survey, not from the federal wage data. What BLS does publish is the spread for the whole group: a 10th percentile of $56,020, a median of $83,680, and a 90th percentile of $144,090, about 2.6 times the bottom. That range is where specialty, seniority, a CPA license and employer size all show up at once. The accountant salary page breaks the distribution down further, and how to become an accountant covers the path into the job step by step.

Most accounting degree jobs start on one of two tracks, and BLS describes both ladders. In public accounting, entry-level accountants move up to senior positions as they gain experience, and those who excel become supervisors, managers or partners, or open their own firms. In management accounting, people often start as cost accountants, junior internal auditors or trainees, rise to accounting manager, budget director or manager of internal auditing, and some go on to become controllers, treasurers, financial vice presidents or chief financial officers.

The useful detail is how people move between the two. BLS notes that public accountants often move into management accounting or internal auditing, and that it is less common for management accountants or internal auditors to move into public accounting. The practical reading: if you are not sure which side you want, starting in public accounting tends to leave both doors open, while starting in industry tends to close one of them.

The CPA license carries the most weight on the public side. BLS notes that many public accountants are CPAs, that any accountant who files a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission must be a licensed CPA, and that publicly traded companies must have CPAs sign the annual and quarterly reports they submit to the SEC. Employers may pay the costs of the CPA exam. Licensure is set by state boards of accountancy rather than by one national rule, and our guide on how to become a CPA walks through the education, exam and experience requirements. If you are weighing the CPA against the credentials built for other tracks, such as the CMA for corporate accounting or the CIA for internal audit, accounting certifications compares them side by side.

Financial managers top the list at a $166,570 median, and the highest-paid 10 percent earn more than $323,270. This is where the management accounting ladder leads, since controllers and treasurers are among the titles BLS counts as financial managers, and controllers often oversee an organization's accounting, audit and budget departments. It is also the one job on the list that is not open to new graduates. BLS lists five years or more of experience in another business or financial occupation as typical for entry, and accountant is among the examples it gives. Experienced financial managers may go on to become chief financial officers.

Even the bottom of that occupation outruns most of the list. The 10th percentile wage for financial managers, $94,310, is higher than the median wage in four of the other five accounting degree jobs. The how to become a financial manager guide covers the climb, and financial manager salary breaks down the full range.

If you want the highest-paying accounting jobs you can apply for without prior experience, three pay more than the accountant median, and BLS lists no prior work experience for any of them: financial and investment analysts at $102,740, financial examiners at $94,160 and budget analysts at $91,640. The tradeoff is volume. Together they open about 32,100 positions a year, against 115,300 for accountants alone. One reminder about medians: they cover everyone in the job, from first-year hires to people with two decades behind them, so read them as a destination rather than an offer letter. The financial analyst salary page shows how that $102,740 median spreads out.

Five of the six accounting degree jobs list no prior work experience, so the realistic entry-level accounting degree jobs are everything on the list except financial manager. They differ in two ways that matter to a new graduate: how much training comes after the offer, and how firm the pay floor is.

Training. Accountants and auditors, budget analysts, and financial and investment analysts list no on-the-job training beyond the degree, which means employers expect your coursework to have done the preparation. New tax examiners, collectors and revenue agents typically get training that lasts between one month and one year. Financial examiners get the longest runway: entry-level examiners learn their duties under senior examiners, and BLS says that training typically lasts more than a year.

Pay floors. There is no federal starting-salary figure. The nearest stand-in is the 10th percentile, the wage nine in ten workers in the job earn more than. Financial and investment analysts ($63,720) and budget analysts ($62,250) have the firmest floors. Financial examiners ($56,230) and accountants and auditors ($56,020) sit close together. Tax examiners, collectors and revenue agents have the lowest, at $42,000, though that group mixes examiners who review simple individual returns with revenue agents who audit large corporations.

The IRS draws the line at the major. Tax examiners, collectors and revenue agents work for federal, state and local governments, and at the Internal Revenue Service the accounting degree is what separates two of those jobs. IRS tax examiner and collector positions accept a bachelor's in any field, or specialized experience. Internal revenue agents, who handle the complex returns of large businesses and corporations, generally need a bachelor's in accounting, a combination of education and experience equivalent to an accounting major, or a CPA certificate. Tax examiners who review individual returns may advance to revenue agent, while an accounting major meets the revenue agent education requirement from the start. Of all the jobs with an accounting degree on this list, it is the one where the major is spelled out most plainly.

Two accounting jobs do not need a bachelor's degree at all, and they make the clearest case for what the degree buys. Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks list some college, no degree, as the typical entry education, and some employers hire them with a high school diploma. Tax preparers list a high school diploma. Neither is one of the accounting degree jobs above, though BLS notes that with experience and additional education, some clerks go on to become accountants or auditors.

Now compare the clerks with accountants. The two occupations are almost the same size, about 1,532,400 clerk jobs and 1,595,200 accountant and auditor jobs in 2025. Over the next decade BLS projects them to move in opposite directions: clerks down about 6 percent, a loss of roughly 85,600 jobs, and accountants up 5 percent, a gain of roughly 79,400. The pay gap is just as wide. The clerk median of $50,670 sits slightly below the $50,980 median for all occupations. The accountant median of $83,680 is about 65 percent higher.

BLS points to the same cause for both forecasts and draws opposite conclusions from it. For clerks, it says software has automated many of their tasks, so the same amount of work can be done by fewer people. For accountants, it says routine work such as data entry may be automated as cloud computing, AI and blockchain spread, but that this change is not expected to reduce overall demand and will instead make accountants' advisory and analytical duties more prominent. Put simply, automation is taking the recording out of accounting and leaving the judgment, and judgment is the part a degree trains.

Two honest caveats. A shrinking job still hires: clerks are still projected to open about 144,100 positions a year, all of them to replace people who retire or change occupations. And tax preparers run against the trend, projected to grow about 5 percent with a $54,920 median. Neither changes the larger point. Of the eight jobs in this guide, the steepest projected decline belongs to the one that needs no degree.

On the federal numbers, yes. Every one of the six accounting degree jobs pays a median above the $50,980 median for all occupations, four of the six are projected to grow faster than the 3.5 percent average, and together they open roughly 217,400 positions a year. The core occupation alone is projected to add about 79,400 jobs over the decade, in a field where BLS expects automation to change the work rather than shrink it.

Now the fine print. The accountant median, $83,680, is lower than the medians for financial and investment analysts, financial examiners and budget analysts, so the biggest pipeline is not the best-paid one. The top of the ladder, financial manager, takes five years or more to reach. Tax examiner and revenue agent jobs are projected to edge down about 1 percent. And the CPA, the license that matters most on the public side, asks for more than a standard four-year degree: either 150 college credit hours or, in states that have adopted the pathway added in 2025, a second year of supervised experience.

So is accounting a good major? For an accounting major who wants a large, steady hiring pipeline and a clear route to a professional license, the data says yes. For a student who cares most about the median paycheck, the analyst jobs pay more, and our accounting vs finance guide compares the two majors directly, pay included. If you are still weighing accounting against its neighbors, what can you do with a finance degree and is a business degree worth it cover the same questions from the other side.

Accounting programs are counted under federal CIP category 52.03, Accounting and Related Services, and our rankings draw on that pool: 1,132 bachelor's programs, 513 master's programs and 774 associate programs.

The bachelor's is the degree these jobs ask for. All six accounting degree jobs list a bachelor's as the typical entry education, and a bachelor's with an accounting concentration is the minimum for every CPA pathway. Compare bachelor's in accounting programs on cost, graduation rate and graduate outcomes, and look past the brand name.

The associate degree is a way in, with limits. None of the six lists an associate degree as typical. BLS does note that in some cases, people with an associate degree, and clerks who meet an employer's education and experience requirements, get junior accounting positions and advance by showing their skills on the job. An associate degree in accounting also works as a lower-cost first two years before you transfer into a bachelor's program, so check which of your credits the four-year school will accept before you enroll.

The master's is the CPA accelerant. BLS notes that some employers prefer accountants with a master's degree, either in accounting or in business administration with a concentration in accounting, and that for senior financial examiner roles, employers often prefer a master's in accounting or business administration, or a CPA. A master's is also one common way to reach the credit hours the 150-hour CPA route requires. The master's in accounting programs ranking covers all 513 options, and the accounting degree programs hub lists every level side by side.