Accounting and Financial News Stories

U.S. Financial Careers: An Analysis by State

Accounting Principals

The financial sector is one of the most rewarding and lucrative industries you can join. Behind every business, from local start-ups to booming, nationwide companies, is a financial department holding it together. Finance and insurance even represented 7% of US gross domestic product in 2014, which amounted to $1.223 trillion.

Best States for Accounting and Finance Careers

Accounting Today

The staffing company Accounting Principals analyzed the best states for accounting and finance professionals to live in by tracking the number of accounting and financial positions in each state from 2009 to 2016 to see how well each state’s job prospects are growing. Texas came out on top. The study looks at some of the employment trends in finance and accounting positions in each state during that same period to see how each state’s job prospects are growing.

U.S. Stocks Edge Higher, Led by Energy

Wall Street Journal

The best-performing sectors of the year led U.S. stocks higher. Several of the moves reflected investors’ doubts that the Federal Reserve will soon raise interest rates. The dollar slumped along with financial shares and Treasury yields, while utilities and telecom companies gained. Slowing growth in the service sector was the latest piece of lackluster data for the U.S. economy Tuesday. Signs of economic weakness don’t bode well for U.S. companies, but traders said recent indicators were being considered more for their potential impact on interest rates.

Accounting Starting Salaries Expected to Rise 3.7% in 2017

AccountingWEB

Starting salaries for accounting and finance professionals are projected to increase an average of 3.7 percent next year, according to staffing firm Robert Half’s 2017 Salary Guide: Accounting & Finance. That’s down from the 4.7 percent increase projected for this year and more in line with the 3.5 percent projected salary increase for 2015.

Government shortchanges nonprofits, quashing innovation

Crain’s New York Business

While recent coverage of the Clinton Foundation has focused on whether donors got special treatment, one thing that keeps being repeated as a saving grace is the foundation's reputation for low administrative costs. “Overhead” is indeed a dirty word in the nonprofit world. This supposedly self-evident truth is why governments at every level have increasingly resorted to underfunding its contracts with social-impact organizations.

In the Blogs: Dark Shadows

Accounting Today

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week. Tax Analysts: Apple, the EU, one of the biggest tax bills in history to be footed, and a country that somehow doesn’t want the money. Tax Policy: Lunch Links include how the Trump tax plan benefits real estate, how Philly has more incentive programs than any other major American city, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s moves regarding the tax reciprocity agreement between his state and Pennsylvania.

Wall Street Re-Engineers the CD—and Returns Suffer

Wall Street Journal

Mary Bailey, a 79-year-old widow in Arlington, Mass., made a big deposit for her grandchildren at her Citizens Bank branch when a financial adviser there sold her on a newfangled $100,000 certificate of deposit. It would, he said, double her savings in six years, according to a later state enforcement action. So she was irate when her first statement showed the CD’s value had fallen to $95,712, thanks to upfront fees. “This was not a CD as I know a CD,” Ms. Bailey says.