KPMG Cuts 5% of American Staff Amid ‘Economic Headwinds’

Accounting firm KPMG is letting go 5% of its American workforce.

The cuts at KPMG — one of the “Big Four” consultants — will take place through the summer, a company spokesperson told PYMNTS Monday (June 26).

The spokesperson also shared a statement from KPMG U.S. CEO Paul Knopp to employees, who said the company was dealing with the same “economic headwinds” facing many firms.

“These economic headwinds, coupled with historically low attrition, translate into a significant mismatch between the size of our workforce and the measure of resources that will be needed to deliver services in the coming year, ” Knopp wrote. “The workforce reduction is designed to address that mismatch.”

A report Monday by the Financial Times noted that KPMG carried out an earlier series of layoffs in February, cutting 2% of its staff.

The report also says other members of the Big Four have also let go of staff this year after a long stretch of rapid hiring: EY is laying off 5% of its workforce, while Deloitte has cut 1.5% of its staff. McKinsey, meanwhile, has undertaken a restructuring plan that would eliminate the jobs of 2,000 of its 45,000-person workforce.

Earlier this year, KPMG — the largest bank auditor in the U.S. — came under fire for its work auditing three banks that failed between March and May.

The company was the auditor for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, all of which were taken over by federal regulators.

“It’s a three-fer,” Francine McKenna, a former KPMG auditor who now lectures at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told the FT at the time. “It’s a dubious achievement … and we need tough action to back up tough talk from regulators.”

“You can’t expect auditors to know a bank run is coming,” added Kecia Williams Smith, a former auditor and regulator turned assistant professor of accounting at North Carolina A&T State University. “What is fair is to ask about an auditor’s risk assessment and whether they had the right audit procedures.”