PwC, EY lay off executive assistants as AI accelerates

Executive assistants at professional-services firms manage partners' diaries, handle expenses and book travel in one of the few remaining white-collar roles that doesn't require elite credentials. They can earn more than $100,000 a year for their trouble, with incentives and bonuses for the highest-ranking. That career path is disappearing as firms like PwC and McKinsey & Co. cut or relocate thousands of support roles to save money and make way for artificial intelligence to take on more work.

PwC's U.S. arm laid off about 600 executive assistants, recruiters and other support staff in February, according to people familiar with the situation. The cuts followed months of uncertainty among the Big Four accountancy's non-client-facing employees after restructuring plans were announced last year, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing private information.

EY, KPMG and Deloitte have also cut support staff in the last 12 months or so, along with McKinsey, accounting firm Grant Thornton and law firms Baker McKenzie and Clifford Chance. Banks, too, are axing support roles. Standard Chartered Plc plans to eliminate close to 8,000 corporate functions positions over the next four years, which Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters described as "replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we're putting in."

Slowing demand for some professional services, a drive to increase profitability and the rise of AI are fueling cuts, although some former staff at various firms said they believed protecting partner pay was also a factor.

PwC US is "modernizing and simplifying how we work," a spokesperson said. "Just as we help our clients do every day, we're becoming more digital, more efficient and better able to reinvest in growth and align more closely with firm and market needs." McKinsey declined to comment but a spokesperson has previously said the firm is working to "improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our support functions" as it adjusts to "a moment shaped by rapid advances in AI." 

The cuts are not the first indication that EA roles and other support positions are under growing pressure as companies focus on more highly credentialed staff. In addition to layoffs, firms like McKinsey and EY are trying to reduce their support-staff expenses by moving New York- and London-based roles to locations such as Florida, Poland, the Caribbean or India — places in similar time zones to partners' offices, but where labor is cheaper.

Yet even these relocated jobs are at risk amid greater AI adoption.

"There is real pressure on margins," said Fiona Czerniawska, chief executive officer of industry researcher Source Global Research, adding that in tough times, firms often prefer to cut support staff before fee-earners. "They are trying to find people they can take out that don't compromise their ability to do chargeable work."

Productivity gains

For consulting-firm partners, having an executive assistant is both a status symbol and a practical resource for managing busy lives and jobs. 

In an August memo written before his appointment to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the industry regulator in England and Wales, former Baker McKenzie partner Jonathan Peddie said profit-driven support staff cuts left partners handling marketing tasks and "fiddling less-than-competently with lines and boxes on a pitch deck." Some rank-and-file partners at EY US were dismayed last year when they heard their longstanding assistants were going to be laid off, according to people familiar with the situation. EY declined to comment. 

"Six-figure executives doing their own administration is a misallocation of costs," said Marianne Whitlock, who, as a director at Strategic PA Recruitment, works to match assistants with firms. "A high-performing executive assistant delivers a return on investment and the productivity gains at leadership level ripple across the entire business." 

For assistants, roles in professional-services firms have historically been stable and well-paid. The average salary for an EA is about $79,000 in New York and about £43,000 ($57,800) in London, according to workplace review website Glassdoor. At top finance firms, EAs can earn as much as $140,000. 

One recruiter at EY US said she cried when she learned last year she was losing her job, as she had hoped to spend the rest of her career with the firm. Another staffer at a top law firm, whose role involved helping lawyers to craft documents, questioned who would do the work her laid-off team had handled. AI was unlikely to be able to pick it up, in her view. A support-team member who survived a round of job cuts said they were told to act as if it was business as usual afterwards, but joked that they had nobody left to do business with.

Support staff become "like the tap people turn off and on" when firms want to boost partner compensation, Bayes Business School professor Laura Empson said.

Shrinking and offshoring

The consulting industry boomed in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, as M&A activity took off and companies paid richly for advice. In the U.S. alone, the sector grew almost 13% to $115.5 billion in 2022, according to Source Global Research. Since then, high interest rates and a series of ethics scandals have slowed the market for consulting, which grew about 4% in the US in 2025.

At the same time, professional-services firms are scrambling to attract and retain consultants and lawyers in specific growth areas such as AI, private equity and cybersecurity, say industry recruiters, adding that pay for those professionals is rising.

EY laid off more than 100 executive assistants across the U.S. in 2025, moving the roles to the Caribbean, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Many of McKinsey's executive assistants are now based in relatively low-cost locations including Tampa in Florida, Costa Rica and Poland, a person familiar with the situation said. KPMG Australia plans to move about 200 EA roles to the Philippines, Sky News reported in February, and the U.K. arm of Grant Thornton laid off some executive assistants last year, a spokesperson confirmed.

EY US recruiters whose jobs were moved to Argentina last year said they found the decisions frustrating, questioning the impact on morale among remaining employees as well as the optics of millionaire partners relocating lower-paid jobs to boost profits. 

Much of assistants' workloads may soon require little or no human labor, though. EAs are expected to be among the workers hardest hit by the adoption of AI, according to a report from the World Economic Forum, while Mark Zuckerberg has said he wants everyone at Meta Platforms Inc. to have their own agentic assistant.

PwC's February cuts were influenced by the firm's push to adopt AI, both in terms of gearing up for automation and cutting costs, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg. McKinsey and Baker McKenzie have also talked about automation and AI in relation to layoffs. A spokesperson for the law firm said its leadership was "rethinking the ways in which we work, including through our use of AI."

AI evolution

Even cheaper, outsourced roles are now at risk. PwC's cuts included about 170 recruiting staff in Buenos Aires, as well as roles in Tampa, people told Bloomberg. Cuts at Baker McKenzie will include staff in Buenos Aires, Tampa, Belfast in Northern Ireland and Manila in the Philippines. The firm is closing its Tampa office, although some support staff will continue to work remotely from Florida, a spokesperson said.

Deloitte US is also planning to cut benefits for some support staff, Business Insider reported last month. Paid family leave is set to be cut from 16 weeks to eight for affected staff, who will also lose five to 10 days a year of paid time off, according to the report. Benefits at Deloitte "are regularly updated," a spokesperson said, "and will be tailored for a small subset of professionals to better align with the marketplace."

Industry experts like Czerniawska suspect that some companies are "AI washing" — blaming the technology for workforce reductions they would have made anyway.

There is certainly potential for the EA role to evolve for a more AI-aided world. Grant Thornton, after cutting U.K. executive assistant jobs last year, has been advertising for EAs who will "optimize workflows with AI and automation."

For now, though, the overall outlook remains gloomy, according to Bayes Business School's Empson.

"Being a cost center, you will always be vulnerable," Empson said. "Sometimes you are more vulnerable than others and this is one of those times."