Chapter 2

What is tech talent?

Scoring Tech Talent 2023

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Highly skilled tech talent workers total 7.1 million in the U.S. and Canada and comprise more than 20 occupations, ranging from software developers who enable the devices we depend on to systems and data managers who ensure the functionality of our tech ecosystems.¹

Although these positions are concentrated within the high-tech industry, they are spread across all industry sectors (Figure 2). Through this occupational lens, a software developer who works for a financial services or health care company is considered tech talent.

Figure 2: U.S. Tech Talent Workforce by Industry (2022)

*Includes computer software and services and computer product manufacturing;
**Finance, Insurance and Real Estate.
***Excluding High-Tech
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2023.
Note: See Table 2b in Appendix section for breakdown of Canadian tech talent by industry.

The 5.9 million tech talent workers in the U.S. and 1.1 million in Canada accounted for a respective 4.0% and 6.5% of each country’s total workforce in 2022. The number of U.S. tech talent workers has increased by 610,000 or 11.4% since 2020, substantially higher than the 6.3% growth in total U.S. employment. Canada’s tech talent workforce grew by 150,000 or 15.7% during this same timeframe.

Tech talent has the highest adoption rate of remote work among all occupational categories since the onset of the pandemic. The high-tech industry has advocated remote and hybrid working arrangements, which are largely enabled by their products and services, and had 44.4% of its employees across all occupations working from home in 2021 versus 14.0% in 2019 (See Appendix Table 1).

¹ Tech talent includes the following occupation categories: software developers and programmers; computer support, database and systems; technology- and engineering-related; and computer and information system managers.