Eight Canadian urban centres rank in CBRE’s newly released analysis of the top 50 North American markets for fostering tech talent and related economic growth. Toronto attains the highest placing among Canadian contenders, deemed to be offering the third best combination of factors that attract a skilled workforce and provide employers with human resources and competitive economic attributes.
That’s a one-notch ascent from the 2021 rankings to exchange places with Washington, D.C., which dropped to 4th this year. Among the remaining top 5, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle are unmoved in first and second, while Metro New York continues in the fifth spot.
Toronto now has the third largest tech workforce of the five top markets — 289,700 — after posting 44 per cent employment growth in the years between 2016-2021. While San Francisco Bay (379,000) and Metro New York (344,500) surpass that in sheer numbers, they recorded more modest respective gains of 12.6 per cent and 2.6 per cent during the same period.
Vancouver cracks the top ten for 2022, rising three positions to eighth place, while Ottawa and Montreal make the top 20 at 13th and 15th respectively. Waterloo Region (24th), Calgary (28th), Edmonton (35th) and Quebec City (39th) fill out the Canadian complement.
Additionally, Halifax, London, Ontario and Winnipeg are identified as part of the “next 25” emerging North American markets — ranked ninth, 10th and 12th for their tech growth potential. Notably, London, with a total of 13,700 tech-related jobs in 2021, boasts 99 per cent growth in the sector’s workforce during the previous five-year period.
“It’s a testament to the impressive momentum this sector has been gathering over the past five years,” maintains CBRE vice chair, Paul Morassutti. “Though the industry faces some very real, short-term cyclical challenges, our longer-term thesis remains unchanged: the technology sector will continue to drive outsized growth as our knowledge-based economy expands.”
Canada accounts for about 1 million or slightly more than 15 per cent of the 6.5 million tech jobs in the two countries. Comparatively, the sector has more economic impact in Canada, representing about 6.4 per cent of the national workforce versus 3.9 per cent in the United States. Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal collectively host more than 635,000 tech jobs, while Waterloo Region, Calgary, Edmonton and Quebec City are home to nearly 133,000.
Last year, Toronto and Vancouver recorded the largest number of tech job gains among the 50 top markets. Toronto also added the most positions — 88,900 — in the years between 2016 and 2021, while Vancouver saw the third most new jobs, at 44,640. Nearly 45 per cent of Toronto’s added tech contingent, equating to 39,700 jobs, was hired during the COVID-19 pandemic — another list-leading statistic over the course of 2020 and 2021.
Ottawa, Toronto and Waterloo Region make the top five for quotient of their workforces holding tech-related jobs. Ottawa leads that list with 11.6 per cent of its total employment in the tech sector, slightly ahead of the San Francisco Bay area with 11.4 per cent. In Toronto, 10.3 per cent of the total workforce is employed in tech. That falls slightly to 9.9 per cent in Seattle and 9.6 per cent in Waterloo, but all well above the 50-market average of 5.6 per cent.
“This sizeable concentration of highly skilled workers offers an environment conducive to innovation,” the report submits.
