What CPAs actually moved for in the first half of 2026
Chris Charite
Chris Charite covers screening, interview prep, and pipeline conversion at Career Choice.
We looked at every offer that reached the accept-or-decline stage across our own searches in the first half of the year. The sample is not a national survey and we are not presenting it as one: it is what came through this desk, in accounting and finance, almost entirely in the Golden Horseshoe.
Base is no longer the deciding variable
In the offers that closed, the winning package was not reliably the highest-paying one. Where a candidate held two offers within roughly eight percent of each other on base, the one with the more generous in-office expectation won in most cases.
Eight percent is roughly where money stopped being the argument. Below that gap, almost nothing else mattered; above it, almost everything else did.
What this means for a brief
If your range is competitive but your attendance policy is five days, you are not competing on the axis you think you are.