Canadian tech talent grew four times faster than the U.S.

Canada added 91,300 tech talent jobs in 2025. While 108,760 jobs were added in the U.S., measured against the size of each workforce, Canada grew much faster.

Canadian tech talent employment increased 7.6% last year, compared with 1.8% in the U.S., according to CBRE’s annual Scoring Tech Talent report. Canada now has about 1.3 million people working in more than 20 technology occupations across industries, including software development, systems management, and hardware engineering.

The larger labour pool also points to a more competitive hiring market. Canada has more tech workers to recruit from, while more industries are hiring them. CBRE links strong demand for specialized talent to higher wages and rising operating costs in major tech markets.

It certainly sounds better than just saying “you’re competing with banks now.”

AI talent is even more concentrated.

The number of AI-skilled tech workers across Canada and the U.S. increased 45% over the past year to 751,000 as of mid-2026. 

Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver now account for 60% of Canada’s AI-skilled workforce. Toronto alone had 33,419 AI workers, putting it fifth among the North American markets listed by CBRE.

That concentration shapes where organizations can realistically hire, which roles can be filled locally, and how much flexibility they have when building AI teams.

“Canadian cities are at the forefront of AI adoption,” says CBRE Canada Research managing director Marc Meehan. “Canada has been the dominant growth story for tech talent over the past five years, with many U.S. and Canadian tech firms tapping into the high quality and comparatively affordable talent on offer here. Tech employment growth is resurgent and Canadian markets are leading the way forward.”

Toronto remained third in CBRE’s overall North American tech talent ranking. Vancouver moved up one spot to ninth, Waterloo Region ranked 10th, and Montreal climbed four spots to 11th. Calgary is ranked at 15th, up from 17th in 2025 and 20th in 2024.

Toronto and Calgary were also the top two of only nine markets CBRE classified as net tech job creators, meaning job growth exceeded the supply of new tech graduates.

Calgary specifically has the top tech job growth rate in North America, up 56% (adding 28,900 jobs) over three years. According to Platform Calgary, this is largely in part thanks to a surge of young professionals in their 20s and 30s. The report also found that 9.4% of the city’s total employment is now tech talent, far ahead of the North American average of 5.5%.

CBRE’s data points to changes in the roles employers are adding. 

Data scientists and computer and information systems managers were among the fastest-growing AI-related occupations in the U.S., while hiring shifted away from some non-AI roles. The report doesn’t provide the same occupation-level breakdown for Canada.

“AI will change job composition more than it will overall job count,” says John Morris, CBRE Group president of advisory leasing in the U.S. and Canada.

Canadian technology leaders are seeing the hiring market getting bigger, more distributed across industries, and more concentrated geographically when AI skills enter the picture. Those three trends will shape where organizations can realistically build the teams behind their technology plans.

Final shots

• Faster workforce growth does not mean easier hiring. AI-skilled talent remains concentrated in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, so location still shapes access to talent.
• Tech leaders are competing with banks, insurers, logistics companies, and other large employers, not just technology firms.
• In markets such as Toronto and Calgary, job growth is already running ahead of new graduate supply, which puts more pressure on recruitment and retention.