CBRE: Toronto is now the third-largest tech hub in North America, behind New York and Silicon Valley, and its tech workforce is growing faster than any US hub
For all the excitement around places like Austin and Miami, the biggest tech expansion has been in Canada's largest city.
What changes with this report is official validation: CBRE's ranking puts Toronto behind only New York and Silicon Valley among North American tech hubs, ahead of the pandemic-era darlings Austin and Miami — and its workforce expanding faster than any US hub's. It also foreshadows the broader reshuffle CBRE later documented when New York overtook the Bay Area as the top tech talent market.
First-order effects
Austin and Miami, the most-hyped relocation destinations of the remote-work era, are directly out-ranked by a Canadian city whose growth engine is immigration-fed talent rather than corporate headquarters moves.
Toronto gains a data-backed recruiting asset: CBRE's third-place ranking lets local employers and provincial agencies argue that the deepest new talent pool is north of the border.
Second-order effects
US hubs competing for the same mobile engineers face pressure to match Canada's immigration openness or lose the pipeline, turning visa policy into an economic-development battleground between governments.
Commercial real estate follows the workers: just as tech firms drove record US office leasing in CBRE's later quarterly data, sustained Toronto headcount growth pulls leasing demand and landlord pricing power toward Canadian markets.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, tech-hub hierarchy becomes fluid and re-scored regularly rather than fixed around Silicon Valley, with rankings increasingly determined by national immigration policy instead of proximity to venture capital.
A durable US-Canada split could emerge in tech geography: American hubs compete on incumbent scale and finance-sector hiring, while Canadian hubs compound faster off talent inflows — a structural divergence regulators and site-selection consultants will have to price in.
The trend: North American tech-hub rankings are being reordered by immigration-driven talent growth, with CBRE's periodic scorecards repeatedly crowning new leaders outside the traditional Bay Area core.
Respect to this NYT feature avoiding the phrase “Silicon Valley North” throughout this entire feature on Toronto's booming tech scene. Am I right @megesimpson? https://twitter.com/...
“As the US immigration system slowed & sputtered under the Trump administration, Canada introduced programs intended to bring skilled workers into a country that is already unusually diverse. Nearly 50% of Toronto's residents were born outside the country” https://www.nytimes.com…
If you're in eastern 🇨🇦 and not aware of this, wakey wakey. If you're from anywhere else, welcome to Toronto, third-largest tech hub in North America. “Toronto's Tech Industry Is Quietly Booming” (The New York Times) https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Everyone points to Miami as the next tech hub because it offers low taxes. But it offers little else from a tech point of view,” a venture capitalist said on a visit to Toronto. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Been saying it for years. Toronto is the place to be. 8 years ago we could have made the move to the valley but we elected to stay in Toronto. Ppl laughed at us. But, the vectors of influence are pointing north. https://www.nytimes.com/... #416 #Toronto
For anybody who's celebrating this article as a mark of success for the Ontario tech ecosystem, I'll just point out that you have to get all the way to the eighth paragraph before you see the name of a single Canadian tech company. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Tech companies leased more than 2 million square feet of new space in the Seattle area in 2021.” https://www.geekwire.com/... When business want to hire developers- people who create code- they know where to go. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Investors and entrepreneurs are promoting warm climes like Austin and Miami as the next big tech hubs. But they are tiny tech communities compared with the new hub growing in the cool air along the shore of Lake Ontario. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Great research, great food, and you get to stay after graduation! most tech jobs that one may want exist in Toronto. (3rd after SF and NYC) students shopping for grad school and postdocs should take note 😉 @CadeMetz does a profile in @nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/...
“For all the excitement around places like Austin and Miami, the biggest tech expansion has been in Canada's largest city.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Toronto is the 3rd largest tech hub in North America, and growing fast. It's about great universities (including @UofT!) and great talent, both homegrown and that welcomed from around the world, including #SriLanka. https://twitter.com/...
“...Toronto is now the third-largest tech hub in North America. It is home to more tech workers than Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, D.C., trailing only New York and Silicon Valley...” https://www.nytimes.com/...