Canada's tech job market has gone from boom to bust in a matter of years, a new study says.
The research released Tuesday by job postings site Indeed says August openings in the sector posted on its platform were down 19 per cent from their early 2020 levels.
"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.
The company said it is hard to tease out which of the factors was more to blame because tech job postings edged down when chatbot ChatGPT was released in late 2022 and triggered a surge of interest in AI.
Indeed's findings come after the tech sector, as well as the broader labour market, has coped with several changes over the last five years. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many saw e-commerce and other digital parts of their business boom, causing some to staff up as their revenue soared.
But as the health crisis dissipated and inflation rose, demand for online services took on growth pattern reminiscent of pre-pandemic times, forcing tech businesses as prominent as Shopify Inc. to lay off staff.
"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."
Many tech firms are rethinking their workforces again as some have found the technology can perform a lot of rudimentary tasks they'd give entry level workers, allowing them to reduce new hiring.
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.
Indeed said the few advanced economies where tech postings remain above early 2020 levels — Australia, Spain, and Singapore — are countries where overall job postings remain elevated.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 26, 2025.
