The year 2024 was one of slow recovery for the Canadian tech talent market, as companies started growing and hiring again following an icy stretch of worldwide layoffs through 2022 and 2023.
While the worst of things appear to be in the rearview mirror, many aspects of the market remain turbulent, both in Canada and around the world.
Why does the chaos continue? The instability appears to stem from a combination of complex factors. Currently, we’re dealing with national and global economic uncertainties rising from political turmoil, disrupted supply chains, and ongoing warfare.
And crashing into all of those issues are entirely different phenomena: rapidly emerging and evolving technologies such as generative artificial intelligence that could change tech, and talent, forever.
Below, we identify the good and the bad of 2024 as it pertained to tech talent in Canada.
The North is Hot and Hiring
As we enter 2025, there are many companies hiring tech talent in Canada, as has been the case throughout the year.
From Silicon Valley, Stripe opened a new flagship office in Toronto, signalling plans to expand its workforce north of the border. Coinbase, meanwhile, has been a fan of Canada for years and continues to intensify its presence in the country. Pinterest has also been dipping into Canada’s tech talent pool this year.
Ottawa’s Shopify, now the second largest publicly traded company in Canada, is poised to hire 1,000 engineering interns next year. Vancouver’s Safe, on the other hand, remains perennially profitable after three decades. With a constantly rising headcount in 2024, the B.C. tech firm intends to hire even more talent next year.
And Toronto-based Wealthsimple announced a major hiring expansion in Alberta, tapping into the province’s deep pool of talent as it continues its rapid growth. The fintech giant, which already doubled its Alberta workforce in the past year, plans to triple the number of full-time employees in the region by the end of 2025.
These are just some examples among many.
Gen AI: Boom or Bust?
Nearly half of Canadian workers are using generative artificial intelligence at work, finds KPMG in Canada’s latest Generative AI Adoption Index survey. That figure is up markedly from less than a quarter of Canadian workings tapping into AI in 2023.
“As we move beyond the excitement surrounding generative AI, it is becoming increasingly clear that this technology is not just a passing trend,” reads a statement from KPMG.
Overall, 77% of professionals now predict AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work over the next five years, according to Thomson Reuter’s Future of Professionals report, up 10% year-over-year. A similar percentage anticipate an increase in innovation at their company.
The top uses for Gen AI in the workplace are currently cultivating ideas, conducting research, and correspondence with colleagues, according to KPMG.
These are practical applications of the technology, says KPMG’s Megan Jones, but fail to brush up against the “true potential” of AI.
“We’re seeing the trend of using generative AI for basic tasks flowing over from personal use into the workplace,” says Jones, a director in KPMG in Canada’s People and Change practice, “but this is low-hanging fruit compared to the true potential it has to drive business value.”
As AI continues to evolve quickly, organizations which pursue the adoption of related skills could gain a competitive edge versus rivals who fail to properly strategize utilization of the tech, the director says.
It’s only becoming more powerful a tool, and thus those who neglect to ride the wave risk falling behind, the logic goes.
Backing up this theory, a report recently identified artificial intelligence as the hottest growing skill in Canada. Indeed, CEOs believe more than one-third of their workforce will require retraining and reskilling over the next three years—a figure up from just 7% in 2021.
It’s also telling that big brands like CIBC are aggressively recruiting AI talent.
Overall, while AI hasn’t transformed anything too radically (yet), it does appear here to stay. And if Jones is correct—that we are merely skimming the surface of the technology’s true capacities—then it would be wise to keep your AI skills sharp.
Make Canadian Tech Talent Great Again
Canadian tech may be hiring, and AI may be booming, but it’s not all rosy.
Tech talent growth slowed last year in Canada, where jobs are increasing at less than half of the rate of the US, a report found.
Employment in the field grew in the US by nearly 4%, or over 200,000 jobs, in 2023. In Canada, meanwhile, 18,000 new positions represented a growth rate of less than 2%.
In addition to a lack of relative growth, compensation is also subpar, with Canadians earning much less on average than U.S. counterparts—while also often encountering higher cost-of-living expenses.
Indeed, more than 90% of professionals in Canada are concerned about inflation outpacing salary growth, found Robert Half’s 2025 Salary Guide.
No wonder then that salary is once again the number one priority for tech talent in Canada, concluded the report.
Another report, conducted by TAP Network and produced by Mercer, validates the widespread concern: It showed a median salary for Canadian tech talent increase of less than 4%—a major decline from 2023’s median increase of 8%.
Canada has long has a brain drain problem. Low wages and expensive houses aren’t currently helping. It is tough to say whether 2025 will deliver better news on this front.
Conclusion
Tech is always in a state of change; some turbulence is inevitable. There’s ample uncertainty now and moving forward, and that has some Canadian talent uneasy.
But for those in the field, it is an exciting time of wide-open opportunities to be at the forefront of new and powerful technologies, by building the bones and being the blood of the companies behind them.
