How Brain Drain and Online Work in the Balkans May Reflect Trends in the Global Accountancy Profession

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As the accountancy profession continues to evolve alongside global developments, those working within the field are increasingly focused on understanding what these changes will look like and how best to prepare for the future. One way to gain insight into these developments is by examining trends within specific regions that reflect broader issues and transformations affecting the accountancy profession. For instance, “brain drain” and remote work are trends that are rapidly reshaping industries and entire jurisdictions, and research into these developments can help accountancy professionals better understand how to navigate these changes on a global scale. Taking a closer look at the Western Balkans can provide valuable insight into these phenomena and contribute to a broader understanding of their impact.

The Phenomena

In the past decade, around 2.5 million people have left the Western Balkans, a part of southeast Europe that includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Many of these exiting people are considered young professionals in critical fields of work and study, leading to a significant shift in “high-skilled” workers and human capital in the Region (per the World Bank). This “brain drain” is characterized by the physical movement of workers that have left their home jurisdictions because of given push-or-pull factors. Brain drain affects the supply of professionals, growth in the region, and the social fabric of entire nations as their diasporas grow.

Because of current brain drain, Western Balkan jurisdictions are educating their youth but not receiving the benefits of that education in the home labor market; professionals leave after their studies and seek opportunities in the EU or overseas. According to the World Bank Group, aggregate economic growth in the Western Balkans decreased from 3.7 in 2024 to 2.6 in 2025. Across the region, some of the main factors of this decline in growth were high youth unemployment rates that sit at 25%, political uncertainty, as well as gaps in the labor market from emigration, demographic changes, and underutilized human capital. In the region, depopulation is accompanied by widespread low trust in institutions and governance, limited opportunities, and EU pull factors, as a recent study by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs posits. This means that reasons to leave are intertwined with social, political, and historical factors that are all too often left out when examining declines in economic and employment trends, which pose as threats to the region’s development.

Brain drain is also related to a global shift towards online work that has developed in recent years, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. According to The European Training Foundation, remote work and freelancing have increased dramatically in the Western Balkans. For instance, from 2017 to 2023, in Serbia, the number of workers that work on “international platforms” (e.g. freelance marketplaces like Upwork, Fiverr, and People per Hour) has increased 3.5-fold. Online jobs not only provide flexibility related to when and where work can be done, but also usually have higher hourly pay than the national averages for regular in-person work in Serbia. It is important to stress that remote work has a lot of positive impact, meaning it leads to more employment opportunities, higher job satisfaction, as well as an increase in global connection and dialogue. Being able to work from afar yet still being able to work and learn in another environment can be extremely beneficial to development and knowledge-sharing. With these benefits, however, there may be a greater reluctance to switch to local work, and in turn, fewer people are available to strengthen local businesses and institutions.

The physical movement of people, as well as the online shift of human capital, are both recent phenomena in the region that consequentially change the workforce and varying professions.

Effects on Accountancy

Brain drain and the shift to remote work are phenomena that reflect unpredictable global and technological changes that inevitably influence the accountancy profession. In most data, accounting falls under the category of “professional services”. Although the supply of accountants has not decreased alarmingly in the region, it is important to think long-term about how the role of accountants will matter in terms of other losses within the job market. For decades, as reflected in a previous IFAC article, the Western Balkans have worked towards implementing international accounting standards as they shifted from a socialist structure to a market economy while going through periods of massive conflict and loss. Especially as many of the Western Balkan jurisdictions have the future aim of joining the EU, compliance with regulations and international standards is crucial. A potential danger for these jurisdictions working towards further implementation and integration is that they may be at risk of a diminishing supply of workers for local firms or institutions, as more accountants turn to remote work for foreign markets or leave altogether. Considering one of the main reasons for emigration is low public trust in institutions, this is significant not only for the development of the accountancy profession, but for the region as a whole, and for the advancement of standards.

IFAC, as the leading global organization representing the accountancy profession, is taking steps to battle this uncertainty. IFAC works in the interest of the public; our Member Value Proposition states our mission to “shape the future of the profession through learning, innovation, a collective voice, and commitment to the public interest,” meaning IFAC strives, through our work in member engagement and accountancy education, to protect the profession where it might be vulnerable. IFAC works with our global network of Professional Accountancy Organizations (PAOs) to understand the talent pipeline issues facing the profession and provide resources like the Opening Doors initiative and The PACT Framework. Understanding the roots of the Balkans' brain drain phenomenon not only helps us tackle a specific region’s challenges; it provides us with a model to better understand and address similar challenges faced in other regions, and how this particular issue interacts with transformations happening to the accountancy profession globally. Creating a dialogue with regulators so that the entire accountancy ecosystem better understands national policy and institutions, as well as speaking with young profession themselves, can help evaluate the necessary steps and initiatives that should be put into place to stimulate growth or brain “circulation” rather than “drain.” With rapid globalization, technological advancements, and a changing geo-political sphere, IFAC is helping to shape the transformation of our profession and exploring how we can be better, together.