United States – October 27, 2026 -- Only 14% of organizations using AI say it reduced their total workforce in the past year, down from the 32% that expected cuts a year earlier, according to McKinsey's State of AI 2026. Two-thirds report little or no AI-related change in employment.
Inside finance, Deloitte found that 84% of finance organizations have yet to redesign jobs or the nature of work around AI. AI is therefore landing on finance teams that look much like they did before.
US labor data projects 5% growth for accountants and auditors through 2035
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of accountants and auditors to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035. It expects about 115,300 openings a year, many of them replacing experienced people who move on or retire.
Alteryx argues auditability, not ease of use, is now finance's core AI constraint
Alteryx, which sells workflow tools to finance teams, says AI has erased the old ease-of-use advantage of finance automation software. Large language models return fluent answers even when they lack a real basis, and follow-up answers arrive with the same confidence as the first. In finance, where someone must sign the number, that creates a liability when an auditor asks where a figure came from.
Alteryx lists four conditions for trustworthy AI output:
- ERP and spreadsheet data reconciled before any AI tool touches it.
- Business rules, such as intercompany eliminations, visible and open to inspection.
- Every figure traceable to its data and rule, with the same answer to the same question.
- Predictable cost, with heavy calculation run once in a governed workflow rather than re-reasoned by a model on every question.
The vendor says finance professionals can encode these rules as governed workflows without writing code. Each new AI assistant can then reuse the same logic.
Crowe runs more than 100 production workflows built by its own tax staff
Crowe has trained more than 190 tax professionals to build their own workflows, and more than 100 of those workflows now run in production, according to the source.