The firm has also shared graduate and school leaver socio-economic data from the past three years, demonstrating the efforts made by the firm to ensure a more diverse talent pipeline.

This shows that the vast majority of the workforce – 74% of respondents – received a state school education, while 60% attended a non-selective state school and 14% attended a selective state school, with 23% receiving private education. 

Additional detail on parental education shows that 48% have a parent or guardian with a university degree, while 43% do not. On parental occupation, 58% have parents in a higher managerial, administrative and professional occupation, 16% have parents employed in a manual occupation and 11% have parents in intermediate occupations.

Of around 1,000 graduates and 250 school leavers to join the firm in 2016, 11% and 18% respectively had been eligible for free school meals.

School leavers (83%) are more likely to have been to a state school than graduate recruits to the firm (64%), and while a third of graduates have a parent who is not university educated this compares with two thirds of school leaver recruits.

Melanie Richards, vice chair at KPMG, said: ‘When we talk about diversity, people immediately think of gender or race, but social background is equally as important.  Professional services firms have often been cited as bastions of the so called social elite and it’s important we consign this stereotype to the past.

‘These statistics will play a vital role in helping us interrogate the socio-economic make up of our workforce.  As well as forming an evidence base for change, we hope this data will enable government and third parties to evaluate the effectiveness of policy in the workplace.  We need others to do the same and report their workforce data too to more effectively benchmark and track whether or not business is making progress on this issue.’