As students spent their summer opening up their school exam results or graduating from universities, many will have been looking forward to the next step in their careers. Many of them will choose the accountancy profession.

Indeed, the large accountancy firms in the UK are seen as one of the biggest, and most popular, graduate recruiters. And it is not just for graduates but now also increasingly for school leavers keen to avoid the prospect of a large student debt.

There had been fears that a possible economic slowdown would have had an impact on trainee recruitment in the accountancy sector. However, new data suggests that these fears appear to be unfounded.