Largest employers, part I

There are more CAs working at Canada’s biggest accounting firms today than there were three years ago, according to a recent CICA analysis.

The 25 largest employers of CAs in public practice now account for 11,053 CAs, as compared to 10,018 in 2002. Much of the increase comes from the six largest firms in Canada, which employ 9,357 CAs, up from 8,203 three years ago.

At 2,089, Deloitte & Touche has the most CAs and is closely followed by KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ernst & Young and Grant Thornton are the only other firms that employ more than 1,000 CAs.

BDO Dunwoody, Meyers Norris Penny, Collins Barrow, RSM Richter and Mallette round out the top 10 and are the only other firms to employ more than 100 CAs.

Consistent with an analysis completed three years ago, the number of CAs employed by the remaining firms in the top 25 drops rapidly, with Horwath Orenstein and SF Partnership rounding out the list with 31 CAs per firm.

Despite the increase in the number of CAs employed by the largest CA firms, they still employ only a fraction (about 1/7th) of Canada’s chartered accountants. A future Findings column will rank the largest nonfirm employers of CAs.

Ranking of firms by number of CAs employed

Rank	Firm	CAs Employed*
1	Deloitte	2,089
2	KPMG	2,045
3	PricewaterhouseCoopers	1,928
4	Ernst & Young	1,403
5	Grant Thornton	1,182
6	BDO Dunwoody	710
7	Meyers Norris Penny	341
8	Collins Barrow	333
9	RSM Richter	198
10	Mallette	152
11	Welch & Company	75
12	Fuller Landau	65
13	Schwartz Levitsky Feldman	54
14	Verrier Paquin Hébert	54
15	MacKay	53
16	Soberman	51
17	Durward Jones Barkwell & Company	44
18	Mintz & Partners	39
19	Friedman & Friedman	38
20	Ellis Foster	35
21	Millard Rouse & Rosebrugh	35
22	Pétrie Raymond	35
23	Demers Beaulne	32
24	Horwath Orenstein	31
25	SF Partnership	31

* As of January 2005

John Tabone is CICA's manager of innovation