NEW YORK – Accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY) is cutting about 3,000 jobs in the US. Financial Times reported. According to the business newspaper, this is mainly due to “overcapacity” in consulting operations. The number of jobs corresponds to 5 percent of the total workforce in the United States.

“After assessing the impact of current economic conditions, strong employee retention and overcapacity in certain areas of our business, we have made the difficult business decision to lay off approximately 3,000 US employees,” an EY spokesperson told the Financial Times.

EY had plans to separate its focus business from the consulting division. The plan, known as Project Everest, spun off much of the consulting activities and tax practice into a separate publicly traded company. However, EY said last week that it could not do so as shareholders did not agree to the evidence required by employees in compensation and the rest of the audit process.

Continuous management

A spokesman for EY insisted in the business paper that the jobs to be cut were “part of the ongoing management of our firm” and “not a result of the recently concluded strategic review known as Project Everest”.

EY is active in the Netherlands with fourteen locations and 5000 employees, including 249 partners. It is one of the ‘big four’ accounting and consulting firms, along with KPMG, PwC and Deloitte.