Sharp Consultancy's Salary Survey 2025/26: Resilience in the Face of Change: The Evolving Jobs Market by Lee Sweeney

​In last year’s commentary I said that a ‘degree of normality’ had returned to the economy and solid GDP growth had finally ‘rid us of the word recession’.

Before I chastise myself horribly, I suspect I wasn’t the only one that couldn’t have forecast what a difference two changes in governments could make (UK first and US second).

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The former immediately created a change in business sentiment which changes to the tax regime further dampened. The word recession reappeared. The latter led to worldwide economic flux for reasons we are all now very familiar with – tariffs anyone?

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What does this mean for employment? Employers don’t like uncertainty because it is errr, so uncertain. Some hiring is by necessity, but some is investment; the former continues and the latter reduces.

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The market is however not ‘dead’. We’ve seen ‘dead’ before (think credit crunch and early Covid). We believe that the market has remained surprisingly resilient. I believe that is because businesses have suffered enough shocks over recent years to have become more resilient. Whether I’m right or wrong, the jobs market (for accountants at least) is somewhere between OK and reasonably good. If you have skills, experience and sensible expectations you are very likely to find what you are looking for in relatively short order.

"If you have skills, experience and sensible expectations you are very likely to find what you are looking for in relatively short order."

Looking through the employer’s lens, good accounting professionals can be found – but they’re not ‘ten-a-penny’. As I discussed in last year’s commentary, employers continue to try and force the issue on increased office-based working and generally (though our survey suggests this is beginning to soften), employees continue to resist. I think we’re still a year or two away from some kind of equilibrium. Salary increases have flattened but job seekers haven’t fully embraced that yet (though again one of our salary survey questions suggests it is softening) and so there is still a need for a degree of generosity to entice potential employees – there is enough choice for them to wait a little longer for the next opportunity if your package isn’t quite attractive enough.

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It appears that private equity firms still have funds to invest and lenders still have appetite to lend and so, perhaps slightly counter intuitively, the deals market still seems to be moving at a reasonable pace with optimism for a better year ahead.

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I like to conclude by turning to my crystal ball and predicting the future. Last year I utterly failed (though as mentioned above, I can perhaps be forgiven). The resilience of the economy (recession didn’t happen) and the employment market gives me hope – economic disaster aside caused by tariffs or some other huge shock, I suspect job seekers and employers will see a reasonably good jobs market. There is definitely some uncertainty in the year to come, but there is a very strong desire in the business community to find a way through or around whatever lies ahead (and experience from shocks gone by to steer a safe course), so the odds of a stable year outweigh the odds of a poor one.

Download the full Salary Survey here!

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