Ottawa fell to 14th place in CBRE’s latest rankings of North American tech hubs, the second straight year the region has lost ground due to sluggish job growth in its tech sector. The real estate firm’s 2026 Scoring Tech Talent report released Tuesday ranks 50 North American markets according to each city’s ability to attract […]
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Ottawa fell to 14th place in CBRE’s latest rankings of North American tech hubs, the second straight year the region has lost ground due to sluggish job growth in its tech sector.
The real estate firm’s 2026 Scoring Tech Talent report released Tuesday ranks 50 North American markets according to each city’s ability to attract and grow tech talent. The survey measures more than a dozen metrics, including tech graduation rates, tech-job concentration, tech labour pool size and labour and real estate costs, among other factors.
Ottawa dropped three positions from its 11th place finish in the 2025 report and four spots from 2024. The region placed fifth among Canadian cities in this year’s rankings after Toronto, which held steady at No. 3, Vancouver, which moved up one spot to No. 9, Waterloo Region, and Montreal, which rose from 15th place last year to No. 11.
The San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle retained their hold on the top two spots. Three other Canadian cities — Calgary (No. 15), Quebec City (No. 37) and Edmonton (No. 42) — also cracked the top 50.
“Having six markets in the top 15 and eight cities in the top 50 is impressive for a country our size,” CBRE Canada Research managing director Marc Meehan said in a news release Tuesday.
“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.”
CBRE’s report said Ottawa’s tech labour force increased 0.8 per cent from 2022 to 2025, growing by just 800 jobs. Meanwhile, CBRE said more than 7,500 students graduated with tech-related post-secondary degrees in Ottawa between 2022 and 2024.
By contrast, Calgary took top spot in the job-creation category with three-year growth of 56 per cent, gaining nearly 29,000 jobs from 2022-25. Overall, CBRE said the Canadian tech sector grew by 7.6 per cent, or 91,300 jobs, last year compared with 2024.
Ottawa’s near-stagnant performance in three-year job growth continues its recent slide in the category.
According to CBRE’s 2025 Scoring Tech Talent report, Ottawa added 11,000 jobs between 2021 and 2024 for a gain of 13.2 per cent — a steep drop from the 31,000 new positions it said were added to the city’s tech payrolls in the five-year period between 2018 and 2023.
CBRE includes workers from more than 20 professions, including software developers, hardware engineers and systems and data managers, in its survey. It says the Ottawa tech industry employed about 98,100 people in 2025.
