Toronto ranks third in the CBRE’s newly released annual analysis of North America’s top hubs for tech employment, based on 13 variously weighted performance indicators and attractants for employers and talent. Five other Canadian cities make the top 15, with two more also placed in the 50 leading markets.
Those major markets are coming off four years of moderate-to-meteoric tech job growth, while consistently posting lower operating costs than counterparts in the United States. Canada added 91,300 tech positions in 2025, translating into 7.6 per cent growth that pushed total employment in the sector up to nearly 1.3 million. That compares to roughly 109,000 additional jobs in the U.S., or an 1.8 per cent increase to a job base that grew to nearly 6.3 million last year.
“Tech employment growth is resurgent, and Canadian markets are leading the way forward,” declares Marc Meehan, managing director, research, at CBRE Canada.
For 2026, CBRE’s top five tech talent hubs are unchanged from last year. The San Francisco Bay area and Seattle are again ranked first and second. New York City and Austin follow after Toronto in fourth and fifth.
None of the other top-five peers came close to Toronto’s net gain of 75,000 tech jobs in the 2022-25 period, equating to a 26.5 per cent increase from 2021 employment as the workforce climbed to 358,000. Even so, that lagged the spectacular 56 per cent job gain in Calgary (28,900 additional positions) and 37 per cent growth in Waterloo (11,400 jobs) over the same four years.
Looking at the rest of the Canadian field, Vancouver claims ninth place in the 2026 rankings; Waterloo Region is 10th; Montreal occupies the 11th spot; and Ottawa and Calgary are respectively slotted at 14th and 15th. Quebec City follows at 37th, while Edmonton rounds out Canadian representation at 42nd.
Toronto is the only Canadian representative among the 10 markets with the highest number of artificial intelligence (AI) specialists. It’s placed fifth with 33,400 such roles — slightly behind Washington, D.C.’s 33,500 — accounting for 9.3 per cent of the total tech workforce. The San Francisco Bay area, with 98,700 AI specialists, and Seattle, with a contingent of 68,000, have a whopping lead on the rest of the pack. Montreal is ranked second in Canada and 15th overall, with roughly 10,000 AI-related positions.
These numbers could be expected to look different again next year since AI pursuits account for a growing share of the jobs within the tech sector, and employers are most actively recruiting for those skills. CBRE analysts report that 37 per cent of U.S. listings for available tech sector positions in June 2026 were tied to AI — up from 11 per cent four years earlier.
“Job growth tied to AI will influence most commercial real estate sectors, from offices to data centres to multifamily,” predicts John Morris, president of CBRE’s advisory leasing group in the U.S. and Canada.
Across the two countries, there were an estimated 751,000 AI-related workers as of June 2026, making up slightly less than 10 per cent of the total tech workforce. Thus far in Canada, roughly 60 per cent of AI-related roles are concentrated in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Three other Canadian markets are prominently placed in ancillary list of 25 emerging markets for tech growth. Halifax which ranks second, after Huntsville, Alabama, enjoyed a 19.4 per cent increase in tech employment over 2023-25 period, that saw the workforce rise to 20,300.
London, Ontario, ranked fifth, recorded a 16.3 per cent job gain in the same period, taking the total tech job count up to 19,300. Meanwhile, Winnipeg, placed 11th among emerging markets, has a larger tech workforce — at 23,300 — than either Halifax or London, but it grew at a slower 14.8 per cent pace over the three years.