Calgary has the greatest growth rate among North American cities for new tech

Varcoe: The study shows that Calgary has the greatest growth rate among North American cities for new tech sector jobs, with a 78% increase in just five years.
"We weren't even in the top 50 in North America ten years ago," said Greg Kwong, regional managing director of CBRE in Calgary. "The progress over the past five to seven years is truly remarkable."


Although Calgary is still the core of Canada's oil and gas industry, over the last five years, it has experienced the fastest growth rate in employment related to technology out of all 50 North American tech hubs.

According to a recent analysis by commercial real estate company CBRE, the number of tech jobs in Calgary increased by more than 26,000 over the course of 2018 and 2019, rising to nearly 60,000 positions.

The growth rate was far higher than that of Ottawa, which came in second, and the Waterloo region, which came in third, compared to all other tech hubs in both Canada and the US.

Over the same time span, Toronto had an increase in the overall number of workers in tech roles of around 96,000 positions.

highest in North America, with over 314,000 employees, an increase of 44% in just five years.

AI-related professions accounted for the majority of the 231,000 new IT jobs created in the U.S. and Canada last year. 18,400 IT talent positions were created in Canada, up 1.7% from 2022 levels.

Calgary has had remarkable expansion in recent times because to the emergence of industries including clean technology, life sciences, and fintech. It climbed up one point to 20th overall in North America in CBRE's annual scoring tech talent assessment.

"We weren't even in the top 50 in North America ten years ago," said Greg Kwong, regional managing director of CBRE in Calgary, on Thursday.

"It's truly astounding how much has grown in the past five to seven years." A number of things have accelerated the pace.

Data managers and software engineers are two in-demand professions where employment is growing in North America.
Since 2020, global technological behemoths like Infosys, Amazon Web Services, and Mphasis have established local operations, generating employment opportunities for thousands of people.

A few well-known Calgary businesses have become "unicorns" in the field, valued at billions of dollars, and raised awareness of the area.

More businesses are letting employees work from home, and a lot of IT specialists are currently doing so from Calgary for organizations with offices in other cities.

"It is astounding to observe that Calgary boasts the fastest-growing tech talent market in North America, surpassing many of the cities we compete with that have historically had much larger technology markets," stated Megan Zimmerman, senior director of business development at Calgary Economic Development.

"People view Calgary as having real opportunity." Local post-secondary institutions are producing more graduates to work in various tech-related occupations.

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As well, Canadian cities generally have a lower cost structure than major U.S. centres such as New York or San Francisco, while Calgary is seen as a more affordable place to live than Vancouver or Toronto — a factor fuelling the population boom.

While larger cities have added more total jobs in the industry than Calgary, it's also worth noting that Cowtown has still created more tech positions over the past five years than centres such as Vancouver, Boston, Denver, Houston and metro New York.

"If you look at the overall GDP of Calgary, the energy sector still is very much the big elephant in the room," said Kwong.

"But as we've seen with this report, the number of people that are being hired, the number of people working in the (tech) economy, is quite impressive." The top tech talent hubs in North America, according to the yearly report, are Austin, Seattle, New York, Toronto, and the San Francisco Bay area. Vancouver was ranked second, and Ottawa was ranked tenth.

According to the survey, the average salary of Calgary's 59,500 tech workers was nearly $105,000 in the previous year.

Additionally, over a five-year period, the overall number of students in the city's training pipeline has increased by 40% in subjects including computer engineering, math and statistics, and other tech engineering.

The report did note, however, that graduates of the local IT sector were outnumbered in terms of employment produced last year by cities like Toronto, Calgary, and San Francisco, which attracted workers from elsewhere to fill available roles.
Read more;
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/varcoe-calgary-growth-tech-jobs-fastest-rate





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