For decades, becoming an executive assistant at elite consulting, legal and accounting firms meant landing one of the few high-paying white-collar jobs that didn’t demand Ivy League credentials or elite degrees. Some assistants earned well above $100,000 while managing the calendars, travel and day-to-day chaos of powerful partners and executives.
Now, those jobs are rapidly disappearing. Professional-services giants including PwC, McKinsey, EY, KPMG and Deloitte are slashing support staff roles as they push aggressively into AI adoption, cost-cutting and offshoring. According to Bloomberg, many employees now fear that one of corporate America’s most dependable career paths is being erased.
Firms are cutting support staff
Bloomberg reported that PwC’s US arm alone laid off around 600 executive assistants, recruiters and support staff earlier this year after months of restructuring uncertainty among non-client-facing teams.
Firms including Grant Thornton, Baker McKenzie and Clifford Chance have also reduced support roles, while banks are joining the trend too. Standard Chartered plans to eliminate nearly 8,000 corporate-function jobs over the next four years, with CEO Bill Winters reportedly describing the strategy as replacing “lower-value human capital” with technology investments, Bloomberg noted.
PwC told Bloomberg it is “modernising and simplifying how we work,” adding that the firm is becoming “more digital, more efficient and better able to reinvest in growth.” McKinsey, meanwhile, previously said it is trying to “improve the effectiveness and efficiency” of support functions in response to rapid AI advances, according to Bloomberg. The layoffs are creating growing frustration internally because many firms still rely heavily on assistants to keep senior executives productive.
Bloomberg reported that some partners at EY were upset after learning their longtime assistants would be laid off. Former Baker McKenzie partner Jonathan Peddie even warned in a memo that support cuts were forcing partners to waste time handling marketing work and “fiddling less-than-competently with lines and boxes on a pitch deck.”
Marianne Whitlock, director at Strategic PA Recruitment, told Bloomberg, “Six-figure executives doing their own administration is a misallocation of costs.” She added that high-performing assistants create productivity gains that ripple across businesses.
Still, industry experts say support staff are often the first to be cut when firms try to protect partner profits during slower economic periods. “There is real pressure on margins,” Fiona Czerniawska, chief executive officer of Source Global Research, told Bloomberg. “They are trying to find people they can take out that don’t compromise their ability to do chargeable work.”
Offshoring is accelerating
Before AI began threatening these roles outright, firms had already started relocating support jobs to lower-cost regions. According to Bloomberg, EY shifted recruiting roles to Argentina and moved executive assistant jobs to the Caribbean, while McKinsey relocated many assistant positions to Florida, Costa Rica and Poland. KPMG Australia is reportedly moving about 200 EA jobs to the Philippines. But even those offshore roles are now being cut.Bloomberg reported that PwC’s layoffs included around 170 recruiting staff in Buenos Aires alongside roles in Tampa. Baker McKenzie is also cutting support positions in Belfast, Manila and Buenos Aires as part of restructuring tied partly to AI adoption.
Workers say morale has collapsed as AI fears spread
Behind the restructuring announcements are workers dealing with sudden uncertainty and emotional fallout. One recruiter at EY US told Bloomberg she cried after learning she was losing her job because she had expected to spend the rest of her career there. Another support employee at a law firm questioned who would handle the complex work their laid-off team once managed, arguing AI was nowhere near capable enough yet. A surviving support-team employee reportedly joked afterward that staff were told to continue “business as usual,” despite there being “nobody left to do business with.”
AI could hit assistants harder
The long-term outlook appears especially grim because executive assistant and administrative roles are expected to be among the jobs most disrupted by generative AI. Bloomberg cited World Economic Forum projections showing administrative assistants and executive secretaries among the occupations expected to see some of the sharpest declines globally between 2025 and 2030.Even Mark Zuckerberg has said he wants every employee at Meta Platforms to eventually have an AI-powered assistant. Some experts, however, believe firms may also be using AI as convenient cover for workforce reductions they were already planning.