Toronto now ranked one of top three cities in North America for tech talent

Toronto was the world’s fastest-growing tech jobs market in 2017 and the fourth-largest tech hub in North America, according to CBRE. The real estate investment and research firm says tech now accounts for more than a third of the demand for office space in downtown Toronto.

While tight job markets and rising costs have dampened hiring momentum in some leading tech hubs, they have also spurred “spillover” demand for expansion and hiring in smaller cities across North America, including Waterloo and Hamilton, according to the 2019 ranking.

The report noted that big centres continue to generate the most graduates and tech jobs. But “opportunity” markets such as Tucson, Arizona, in the U.S. and Waterloo and Hamilton in Ontario posted dramatic growth in jobs over the past five years, with Tucson up by 90 per cent, followed by Hamilton at 52 per cent and 40 per cent for Waterloo.

“Opportunity markets offer quality labour pools and affordability that supports rapid scalability,” said Paul Morassutti, CBRE’s Canada vice chair. “These markets can be ideal for small-scale operations, startups and tech jobs with non-tech employers like banks, media and services firms.”

In a separate report from San Francisco-based career marketplace Hired, released in June, Toronto and Boston topped a tech salary growth survey of 13 global cities, with the average pay in the GTA hitting $100,000 this year, a 9 per cent jump over 2018, but still far from the Silicon Valley average of $192,000.

The Hamilton region, meanwhile, is undergoing an “economic renaissance,” in the aftermath of steel sector downsizing, said Jacques Comtois, general manager of imaging system maker L3 Wescam, which in June announced plans for a 330,000-square-foot head office in the nearby community of Waterdown. More than 1,000 employees working at company facilities in Burlington will move to the new Waterdown building with an estimated 200 new hires planned for 2021.

“Hamilton has a rich business legacy of transforming ideas into high-technology products and offers a skilled talent base with a deep knowledge of advanced manufacturing and applied research,” Comtois said when the project was announced.

Hamilton’s economy, benefiting from a low loonie, a well-trained labour pool and cost advantages over Toronto has been “pretty strong” in recent years, added Alan Arcand, associate director at the Centre for Municipal Studies at the Conference Board of Canada, after the latest job numbers from Statistics Canada showed a healthy job market in the Hamilton area.

The job market in the Region of Waterloo is also vibrant, according to Statistics Canada data as of June 2019, which shows strong employment gains in construction, transportation and warehousing employment. Waterloo has a knowledge- and service-based economy that boasts substantial insurance and high-tech sectors, as well as two universities.