Training and labor market demand for accountants in the Porto Alegre (RS, Brazil) metropolitan area

Abstract

This study investigates the link between the training and the market demand for accountants in the Porto Alegre Metropolitan Area – PAMA. For this purpose, it discusses the accounting education and the labor market for accountants and presents the results of previous studies about this subject. Bivariate and Multivariate Descriptive Statistics techniques were used to analyze 939 public job offers collected from January to September 2007 in the Zero Hora newspaper and at Manager, a professional placement site, besides the curriculum and the descriptions of disciplines taught at nine undergraduate courses of Accountancy at Institutions of Higher Education in the PAMA. The T Coefficient of Kendall Post-Order correlation, calculated to verify the correlation between the priority rankings of each IHE and the job market, indicates that at a level of significance of 5%, only one of the colleges is aligned with the market as regards the ranking of importance assigned to each group of competencies. Multiple Correspondence Analysis also shows a certain distance between market demands and the offers of the IHEs. The results indicate that, although the colleges include in their curriculum disciplines for the development and improvement of competencies required by the market, there is a certain lack of alignment because of the focus of the courses, since employers still look for professionals with knowledge of corporate and fiscal accountancy, whereas the IHEs develop a broader, more managerial profile.

Key words: labor market, accountants, accountant training.