The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor: A Data Deep Dive

In CBRE’s 2026 Scoring Tech Talent Report, the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor emerged as the largest tech talent market in North America. With 399,900+ tech workers, the Corridor is the top tech talent market for startups, scale-ups and multinationals hoping to score the best hires.

The power of the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is undeniable, especially in comparison to its peers: the New York Metro Area and the San Francisco Bay Area. A very real tech corridor connects Waterloo and Toronto, and it’s been that way for decades.

Our regions are only an hour apart; talent and companies travel seamlessly between the two, and our institutions frequently collaborate. The breakneck pace of innovation that takes place here is often achieved by working together.

The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor stretches 105 kilometers between the cities of Toronto and Waterloo, Ontario.

Following this accolade, we’re prepared to make a bold statement: the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is a better choice for tech expansion than New York City or San Francisco, based on talent, quality and cost. Here’s the data to back it up.

Note: CBRE doesn’t provide data on the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor, so all statistics labelled as such are calculated by Waterloo EDC, combining data from both markets and, when applicable, weighting for size.

Tech talent market size

For the first time, the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor outstrips the New York City Metro Area and the San Francisco Bay Area in terms of market size. We now have the largest tech talent market in North America, after adding the most amount of tech jobs from 2023 to 2025.

CBRE defines tech talent as “a group of highly skilled workers in more than 20 technology-oriented occupations driving innovation across all industry sectors,” and characterizes tech talent markets “by high concentrations of college-educated workers, major universities producing tech graduates and large populations of young people.” Clearly, size is only part of the story. Growth, concentration, quality, availability and cost all factor into what makes a market ideal for tech expansion.

As stated above, our approach combines Toronto and the Waterloo region’s CBRE data. That means we’re actually missing additional data for communities that fall within the Corridor but aren’t included in CBRE’s reporting (such as Guelph and Hamilton). Our numbers become even more impressive when you realize we’re lowballing them. It’d be like the San Francisco Bay Area not including San Jose!

Tech talent growth and concentration

Tech talent growth and concentration affect a market’s future potential. If you relocate or expand to this market, is it growing enough to sustain your company? How concentrated is the market—and the ecosystem—you’re surrounding yourself with? Frankly, it’s not enough to have just a lot of tech workers. You need to ask: what does the future hold for this market?

The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor’s tech talent workforce grew 27.6% between 2022 and 2025, and tech talent makes up approximately 11.4% of total employment. We reached these numbers by combining Toronto and Waterloo’s CBRE data, weighted by market size, but we’ve also included the regions’ standalone stats for more context. Either way, our Canadian corridor trumps San Francisco and New York for concentration and growth.

Let’s get more granular. In these massive tech markets, cities that attract all walks of life, what age demographics are growing the most?

Toronto and Waterloo are two of the top markets for population growth among people in their 20s and 30s. In fact, the Waterloo region experienced the fastest growth for both demographics, with growth rates of 49.6% (20s) and 37.7% (30s). Across both categories, New York and San Francisco are experiencing declines. And these are the people who currently make up the largest percentage of the workforce.

If you’re considering a tech expansion, this sends the signal that the Corridor has bright, young talent emerging from university, equipped with AI skills and entrepreneurial acumen, as well as a large, experienced workforce. It means you can find, hire and retain the talent you need here.

Tech job creation

The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is also creating tech jobs at lightning speed. The job growth highlights the unique momentum of our tech ecosystem. CBRE reports, “Slowing demand for tech talent and rising supply of tech graduates reduced the number of net job creation markets and increased the number of education or net tech graduate markets from last year.” CBRE scores fifty markets in its report, and only nine were “net job creation markets.” Toronto (and the Corridor, by extension) was one of them.

The Corridor created about 50,000 more tech jobs than it produced tech graduates. New York and San Francisco did the opposite, graduating more tech workers than they had jobs for. In other words, the Corridor is pulling in tech workers while San Francisco and New York are losing them.

What’s more, the Corridor still graduated 36,214 students with tech degrees over two years, more than the San Francisco Bay Area. The University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo are two of Canada’s top schools for engineering, computer science and artificial intelligence, and two of North America’s largest tech schools, contributing to the stellar quality and availability of tech graduates in the Corridor.

Tech talent costs

Are you waiting for the catch? How can an ecosystem score well on size, concentration, growth and quality? Is it unreasonably expensive to locate here?

Nope. There’s simply no catch. The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor has one of the most advantageous cost profiles, performing significantly better than both New York and San Francisco.

Average salaries for tech workers are lower in the Corridor than in New York or San Francisco. In Toronto, the average tech wage is $84,050, and in Waterloo, it’s $82,918. San Francisco more than doubles those figures. If you want to explore tech talent wages by specific role—software developer, AI engineer, data scientist, etc.—you can check out our Tech Talent Calculator, which lets you compare the costs of building your team in Waterloo vs. elsewhere.

To operate a tech company in the Waterloo community for a year with 500 employees and 60,000 sq. ft. of office space costs approximately $40M. In New York City or San Francisco, you’re looking at $73.9M and $90.6M, respectively. Those are hefty price tags.

The Corridor, the New York Metro Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are fierce competitors. On size alone, they are neck and neck. But when you dive a little deeper, you surface with a clear winner.