Is Your State Running Low On Accountants?

In Nevada, each accountant is handling 139 professionally prepared returns. The national average is 59.

A new Accountant Shortage Index by Sam’s List, a directory for finance professionals, ranked all 50 states and Washington, D.C. to find out which states are running short on accountants—and where they are easy to find.

Key findings include:

Nevada ranks No. 1 for shortage severity, with just 1.75 accountants per 1,000 residents and 139 professionally prepared returns for every accountant, more than twice the national average of 59. The state’s accountant workforce shrank by 29.5% between 2019 and 2024, the steepest decline among jurisdictions.
Eight states lost accountants between 2019 and 2024 while demand continued to grow. Texas shed 4,880 accountants, a 4.3% decline, yet carries the largest absolute shortfall of any state: an estimated 24,746 more accountants needed to match the national baseline.
Mississippi (No. 2), Arkansas (No. 3), Kentucky (No. 4), and South Carolina (No. 5) all record fewer than 2.75 accountants per 1,000 residents. Mississippi has 97 professionally prepared returns per accountant. In Arkansas, that figure is 91.
The gap between shortage and surplus states is wide. Washington, D.C. has 13.84 accountants per 1,000 residents, and just 16 practitioner returns per accountant. New York carries a surplus of 27,159 accountants above the national baseline, the largest absolute surplus in the country.
Professional filing rates in shortage states run high: Mississippi and Arkansas both sit at 58%, meaning more than half of all returns go through a paid preparer in states where supply is already critically thin.

“If you run a firm in Nevada, you are not dealing with a staffing inconvenience: you’re dealing with demand that has structurally outrun supply. At 139 returns per accountant, you have real pricing power, but you are also hemorrhaging capacity at every staff departure,” Kimberly Green, co-founder of Sam’s List, said in a statement. “Firms in states facing shortages should raise rates and treat every experienced hire as a retention emergency. The 2019 to 2024 trend tells you this is not cyclical, the states that were thin five years ago got thinner.”

The full state rankings are as follows, with No. 1 being the state having the biggest shortage of accountants.

Rank	State	Accountants per 1,000	Practitioner Returns per Accountant	Shortage Gap	Change % (2019-24)	Practitioner Filing %
1	Nevada	1.75	139	8,159	-29.5%	55%
2	Mississippi	2.35	97	5,569	+20.1%	58%
3	Arkansas	2.48	91	5,480	+3.6%	58%
4	Kentucky	2.64	89	7,328	+0.8%	57%
5	South Carolina	2.74	81	8,338	-4.6%	53%
6	Idaho	2.75	78	3,005	+41.9%	53%
7	Maine	2.84	82	1,971	-8.4%	50%
8	Louisiana	2.94	75	5,996	+13.2%	57%
9	West Virginia	3.01	66	2,169	+24.9%	48%
10	New Mexico	3.13	67	2,340	+11.9%	49%
11	Alaska	3.31	60	682	+11.9%	46%
12	Arizona	3.41	60	6,253	+15.9%	50%
13	Texas	3.45	59	24,746	-4.3%	51%
14	Hawaii	3.45	72	1,127	+3.6%	57%
15	Oregon	3.60	57	2,727	+23.8%	45%
16	Indiana	3.63	64	4,249	+20.9%	52%
17	Tennessee	3.68	58	4,086	+19.1%	51%
18	Florida	3.87	68	8,473	+27.1%	59%
19	Georgia	3.98	55	2,862	+22.1%	54%
20	Oklahoma	4.01	52	940	+17.8%	54%
21	Missouri	4.04	58	1,213	-4.5%	54%
22	Maryland	4.09	59	901	+4.4%	54%
23	Montana	4.09	62	167	+38.5%	55%
24	North Carolina	4.15	51	998	+37.5%	51%
25	Pennsylvania	4.17	61	861	+7.0%	56%
26	Wisconsin	4.20	62	232	+11.9%	56%
27	Vermont	4.30	59	-40	+6.1%	52%
28	Illinois	4.30	62	-830	+5.7%	59%
29	Iowa	4.31	64	-257	+37.4%	63%
30	Michigan	4.34	60	-1,023	+24.8%	58%
31	Ohio	4.36	54	-1,447	+9.7%	52%
32	Wyoming	4.38	54	-87	+38.7%	52%
33	California	4.41	67	-6,719	+16.7%	65%
34	Connecticut	4.50	60	-971	+7.4%	59%
35	New Jersey	4.56	69	-3,108	+9.3%	69%
36	Utah	4.67	44	-1,554	+61.4%	51%
37	Washington	4.67	41	-3,519	+15.9%	43%
38	Kansas	4.71	51	-1,423	+10.6%	56%
39	Alabama	4.89	46	-3,430	+46.1%	58%
40	Nebraska	5.00	51	-1,535	+22.2%	56%
41	North Dakota	5.14	50	-725	+8.7%	58%
42	Minnesota	5.21	52	-5,711	+31.0%	58%
43	Rhode Island	5.37	57	-1,261	+26.2%	64%
44	New Hampshire	5.53	41	-1,827	+37.9%	47%
45	New York	5.59	57	-27,159	-0.2%	68%
46	Virginia	5.66	37	-12,617	+19.0%	48%
47	Delaware	5.77	40	-1,632	+23.6%	52%
48	Colorado	5.92	38	-10,120	-4.3%	47%
49	South Dakota	6.36	41	-1,990	+25.5%	57%
50	Massachusetts	6.36	44	-15,226	+31.4%	60%
51	Washington, D.C.	13.84	16	-6,663	-9.9%	47%

Methodology: Sam’s List compiled accountant employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program for 2024 and 2019, covering all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Individual income tax returns filed through authorized practitioners in fiscal year 2024, sourced from IRS electronic filing data, were used to calculate a practitioner returns-per-accountant ratio for each jurisdiction. Population figures are drawn from 2025 U.S. Census estimates. States were ranked using a composite score based on the number of accountants per 1,000 residents and practitioner returns per accountant. The Shortage Gap represents the estimated number of additional accountants each state would need to bring its practitioner returns-per-accountant ratio to the national baseline.

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