Canada's Tech Job Market Has Gone From Boom To Bust In Last Five Years

Canada's tech job market has collapsed from its pandemic-era boom, with postings down 19% from 2020 levels. Analysts say the decline was sharper than the overall job market and worsened after ChatGPT's debut in 2022 fueled AI-driven shifts in workforce demand. The Canadian Press reports: 'The Canadian tech world remains stuck in a hiring freeze,' said Brendon Bernard, Indeed's senior economist. 'While both the tech job market and the overall job market have definitely cooled off from their 2022 peaks, the cool off has been much sharper in tech.' He thinks the fall was likely caused by the market adjusting after a pandemic boom in hiring along with recent artificial intelligence advances that have reduced tech firms' interest in expanding their workforces.

'We went from this really hot job market with job postings through the roof to one where job postings really crashed, falling well below their pre-pandemic levels,' Bernard said. However, he sees AI's recent boom as a 'watershed moment.' While much of the decline in tech job postings has been in software engineer roles, Indeed found hiring for AI-related jobs was still up compared to early 2020. In fact, machine learning engineers and roles that support AI infrastructure, such as data engineers and data centre technicians, were among the job titles with postings still above early-2020 levels.

At the same time, Indeed saw postings for senior and manager-level tech jobs drop sharply from their 2022 peak, but as of early 2025, they were still up five per cent from their pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, basic and junior tech titles were down 25 per cent. When it compared Canada's overall decline in tech job postings, Indeed found the country's decrease from pre-pandemic levels was somewhat milder than the retrenchment it has observed in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany. The U.S. fall amounted to 34 per cent, while in the U.K. it was 41 per cent. France saw a 38 per cent drop and Germany experienced a 29 per cent decrease. 'All this just highlights is that this tech hiring freeze is a global tech hiring freeze,' Bernard said.

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