State of Tech Workforce Canada

CompTIA’s State of the Tech Workforce Canada provides an in-depth look at employment, economic impact, technology trends, salaries, hiring activity and more across the provinces and metropolitan areas of Canada.

Net tech employment in Canada reached an estimated reached an estimated 1,352,210 workers in 2022.   It is projected to grow by 1.3% to reach 1,369,789 workers in 2023. This measure of employment provides the net of the Canadian tech industry workforce and the tech occupation workforce across all sectors.

The top provinces when it comes to projected net tech employment are Ontario and Quebec. The greatest number of jobs is projected to be added in Ontario in 2023. Employment concentration provides a measure of tech employment relative to employment across all the other industry sectors in a local economy. At about 8%, Ontario has the highest concentration of net tech employment as a percentage of its overall employment base. Quebec and British Columbia follow in the rankings.

Mirroring the situation with economies across the globe during the height of the pandemic, quarterly tech job postings among Canadian employers fell during much of 2020. Postings then rebounded with many employers resuming hiring activity in conjunction with a recovering Canadian economy. During the time period Q1-Q4 2021, employer job postings increased 51,826 year-over-year, the equivalent of a 60% increase. The increase in job postings continues but at a slower rate when compared to the previous year. During the Q1-Q4 period of 2022, employer job postings increased 24,845 year-over-year, the equivalent of a 18% increase.

The top four occupation categories for job postings are software engineers and designers, IT support and network technicians, database analysts and administrators, and computer and information system managers. Combined, these categories contributed more than half of employer hiring activity during the period.

As a percentage of the overall Canadian economy, the tech industry accounts for approximately 5.5 percent of direct economic value, which translates to $113.41 billion CAD. In addition to the direct economic impact, there are downstream indirect benefits of the technology industry, such as the employment multiplier effect of technology ecosystems.

Read more about IT Workforce.