Toronto’s tech talent pool experienced the most growth across the Canadian and United States markets between 2016 and 2021, according to CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent report for 2022.
This year, CBRE ranked Toronto the third best city across Canada and the US for tech talent, pulling in over 88,900 jobs within five years. That moved Toronto up one spot from its ranking in the previous report, replacing Washington, DC.
Markets that moved up the most in rank included Vancouver and Edmonton, climbing up three spots.
The top five markets were the same as last year, consisting of one Canadian city (Toronto), as well as US regions San Francisco; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and New York.
In line with the San Francisco Bay Area, Ottawa had the highest concentration of tech talent in North America, more than double the average among all 50 ranked cities of 5.6 percent.
Toronto and the Waterloo region, along with Seattle, were among the top five most concentrated tech markets, ranging from 9.6 percent to 10.3 percent of their total employment.
CBRE’s scorecard uses 13 metrics to measure each market’s depth, vitality, and attractiveness to companies seeking tech talent and to tech workers seeking employment. Some of the metrics used include tech degree graduation, tech job concentration, tech labour pool size, as well as labour and real estate costs.
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This year, Vancouver was ranked eighth, followed by Ottawa in 13th and Montréal in 15th place—up one spot from its ranking last year. Calgary ranked 28th, which is the same as last year’s report, while Edmonton is positioned at 35th place.
Markets that moved up the most in rank included Vancouver and Edmonton, each climbing up three spots. Québec City fell five spots, currently ranked 39th and scored the lowest in all of the Canadian regions in the list.
Among Canadian cities, Vancouver is second to Toronto when it comes to the amount of new tech talent across five years, with around 44,460 jobs. However, Vancouver saw the highest percentage growth overall, an increase of 63 percent. Toronto saw a hike of 44 percent in tech employment, and Québec City follows closely with 43 percent.
Featured image from Dave Xu via Unsplash.
