PwC UK received 60,000 applications for 2,000 entry-level places last year as graduates hunt for roles in a white-collar jobs market under threat from the roll-out of AI.
The 35 per cent year-on-year increase in applications for the 2026 intake comes as experts predict that AI will reshape the traditional “pyramid” structure of consultancies. PwC has already abandoned a target to add 100,000 to its worldwide headcount by the middle of this year.
However, Phillippa O’Connor, chief people officer at PwC UK, said the Big Four accounting firm had chosen not to replace or offshore some routine work as it wanted junior staff to learn to see subjectivity, for example in auditing accounts that “could look black and white to an AI machine”.
PwC acknowledged it has been “removing lower-value activities” as technology and AI evolve, but O’Connor added: “When we did the strategic workforce planning, there’s a version of that pyramid where you take out a bigger component of the bottom of the pyramid. And then you look forward three to five years and say, ‘What will be the skills that our then managers have that we don’t think are automatable? How will we have trained those?’”
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O’Connor was speaking as Anthropic’s latest launch of AI tools for enterprise triggered a sell-off in more traditional tech stocks and fuelled fears over the future for white-collar workers.
The number of jobs across the UK’s finance, professional services and information and communication sectors has already shrunk over the past year against an economywide backdrop of weak hiring, with predictions that the cull will continue due to AI.
Top consultancies including PwC have been freezing starting salaries and many experts expect their “pyramid” structure, in which a firm employs thousands of junior-level employees and thins out the ranks higher up, to change with fewer people employed at the bottom.
O’Connor said PwC would continue to invest in entry-level staff and help them develop the judgment needed to lead client-facing work.
“To have a successful business with the knowledge, experience and skill set to deliver a client’s needs, these skills are not acquirable, you have to build them [internally],” she said.
Recent graduate intakes have been “a couple of hundred” smaller than in the past, she said, but job cuts across PwC’s UK practice over the past year were “much more about the market in the UK” than about the impact of AI.
Amid a sector-wide slump, PwC UK last year reported flattening revenue growth as its consulting and risk advisory units contracted in the UK, offset by a better performance in audit, deals and tax.
PwC is not following the lead of consultancies such as McKinsey that ask graduate candidates to use an AI assistant to complete some hiring tests. “We can teach people to prompt,” O’Connor said. “We want people who can be really successful in an organisation and culture ... not who can prompt well, get the answer from AI and tell it to us.”
O’Connor said the increase in graduate applications had allowed the accounting firm to “raise the bar” and select candidates able to deliver higher value work.
In assessing candidates, PwC is putting greater weight on “human” skills such as communication, empathy, emotional resilience and the ability to handle change.
The productivity gains from AI meant that already “a graduate trainee does what a senior associate did three to five years ago”, she said, adding: “What that does for us at this point in time is it puts more pressure on human skills”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
