Accenture will hire at a lower rate next year 'in part due to AI', its chief executive told investors, after a year in which revenue per person rose

Accenture ended fiscal 2026 with about 814,000 people, up 5 percent on the year, and told investors on its fourth-quarter earnings call on 1 October 2026 that the pace of hiring will now slow. "When we look at next year, we expect to hire in every market, but it will be below what we've been hiring this year," chair and chief executive Julie Sweet said. "We do expect to hire, but it will be at a lower rate in part due to AI." She tied the same technology to the firm's productivity: "We increased revenue per person this year. So you are seeing an increase in revenue per person, which is what you would expect in part due to AI." Sweet said the firm still expects to take on more entry-level staff, with the content of those jobs changing, and that it now has nearly 110,000 AI and data professionals, past the 80,000 it had set as a three-year goal. The company's framing is that the opportunity outweighs the efficiency: "We continue to believe the opportunities related to AI are greater than the impact of AI-related efficiencies in our business," she said, adding that Accenture intends to "lean into these efficiencies". Accenture guides to revenue growth of 3 to 6 percent in local currency for fiscal 2027 and another roughly 5 billion dollars of acquisitions. No cut was announced on the call; this is the world's largest consultancy saying its headcount will grow more slowly than its revenue because of the technology it sells. Accenture's exit of more than 11,000 people in the three months to August 2025, under its 865 million dollar reinvention programme, is already recorded separately on this site.