Toronto Tech Jobs Boomed. Paycheques Didn't Keep Up.

Toronto tech jobs now sit at the centre of the third-strongest tech talent market in North America, according to the latest Scoring Tech Talent report from commercial real estate firm CBRE, published Aug. 18. The city scored 72.73, trailing only the San Francisco Bay Area at 81.98 and Seattle at 74.37, and finishing ahead of the New York metro area at 68.50.

That's a genuinely good result, and the growth behind it is real. Between 2022 and 2025, the Toronto region added roughly 75,000 tech workers — more than any other market on the continent, a 27 per cent expansion. But there's a second thing worth knowing about how this ranking is built. CBRE compares 50 markets on 13 measures, and what employers pay for talent carries more weight than what they pay for office space.

Which brings up the number nobody put in the headline. In the United States, tech workers earn about 15 per cent more than the average worker in their economy. In Canada, that premium is eight per cent. Same skills, roughly half the bump. A big part of what makes this country attractive to the firms doing the hiring is that its engineers are comparatively cheap.

Where Toronto landed, and who finished ahead

The top of the list is familiar. The Bay Area still leads on sheer depth of talent and research spending, and Seattle holds second on the strength of its cloud and enterprise employers. Toronto's third-place finish is a repeat, not a jump — Daily Hive reported it as the second straight year in that position. New York, Austin and Washington, D.C. round out the next three spots.

Why Toronto tech jobs grew faster than anywhere else

Volume is Toronto's advantage. Canada now counts about 1.3 million tech workers, roughly seven per cent of the national workforce, compared with four per cent south of the border. The country added 91,300 tech positions in 2025 alone, a 7.6 per cent increase, while American tech employment grew 1.8 per cent. Toronto absorbed the largest single share of that hiring, and the universities feeding it kept the pipeline full.

Artificial intelligence is doing much of the lifting. As of June 2026, Toronto counted 33,419 workers in AI-focused roles — fifth in North America, ahead of Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Atlanta. Across Canada and the U.S., about 751,000 people now hold AI skills, up 45 per cent year over year. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver together account for roughly 60 per cent of Canada's AI concentration.

The pay gap sitting underneath the ranking

Ranking well on talent and getting paid well for it are two different things, and this report quietly measures both.

A smaller premium for the same work

CBRE lists average tech salaries in U.S. dollars, which flatters nobody in Canada. Waterloo Region came in at US$87,955 and Vancouver at US$86,922, with Ottawa at US$80,178, Calgary at US$77,019, Montreal at US$72,554 and Edmonton at US$70,185. Convert those and add Canadian cost of living — Toronto rent in particular — and the eight per cent premium starts to explain why so many senior developers here still take American contracts.

Why cheaper labour pushes a city up the list

CBRE's scoring rewards markets where a company can hire a lot of qualified people without paying Bay Area rates. Toronto has the second-largest talent pool on the continent and a wage bill that looks like a discount from Seattle or New York. For employers, that's the pitch. For the person writing the code, it's the reason a strong ranking doesn't always show up on the pay stub.

Six Canadian cities made the top 15

This is the first time Canada has placed six markets in the top 15. Vancouver ranked ninth at 60.52, Waterloo Region tenth at 60.00, Montreal eleventh, Ottawa fourteenth and Calgary fifteenth. Calgary posted the fastest growth rate of any market at 56 per cent since 2022, with Waterloo at 37 per cent — both outpacing Toronto's percentage growth, if not its raw numbers.

Talent is one of the hardest pieces of building a great technology ecosystem, and we're so lucky to have it, said Julia Konafal, head of platform and operations at Golden Ventures and a founding partner of Toronto Tech Week.

Marc Meehan, CBRE Canada's research managing director, credited AI adoption for the shift. Companies have leased about five million square feet of office space for AI work across Canada, three million of it in Toronto and roughly one million in Montreal — a real signal, given how soft the office market has been since 2020.

What this means if you work in tech here

If you're job hunting in the Greater Toronto Area, the market depth is on your side and the salary benchmarks are not. Two practical moves follow from that. Check your comp against Waterloo and Vancouver postings rather than U.S. listings, since those are the numbers a Canadian employer will actually argue from. And watch where the AI leasing goes next — those three million square feet are the clearest advance signal of which teams are hiring in 2027, well before the job boards catch up.