It should come as no surprise that the big accounting firms are also Canada's largest employers of CAs. What is surprising, however, is that the seven largest accounting firms together employ fewer than 9,000 CAs. That leaves almost 60,000 CAs who work outside of large firms. Approximately 12,600 of these CAs work in small and medium-sized practices, while the remainder work in industry, education, government, other fields or are retired.

The table below ranks firms by the number of CAs they employ. With more than 1,900 CAs, KPMG tops the list.  Apart from the seven largest firms, Meyers Norris Penny employs the most CAs (253). Richter Usher & Vineberg and Collins Barrow round out the top 10 and are also the only other firms in this category with more than 100 CAs. The number of CAs at various firms quickly drops off after that.

This data suggests that the middle tier is relatively small and that there are many smaller accounting firms in Canada in terms of the number of CAs employed. Excluding the top 25 employers of CAs, there are still 11,260 CAs who work in public practice. That number includes more than 4,000 sole practitioners and about 5,500 firms that employ 10 or fewer CAs.