Employment & Salaries
For the eighth consecutive year, employment in B.C.’s high tech sector reached a new high in 2019, rising 4.7% to 131,220 – the fourth straight year that growth in employment in the high tech sector exceeded that of overall provincial employment growth. The manufacturing and service sectors saw growth, with increases of 9.0% and 4.0% respectively. One of the largest areas of employment in BC tech is ‘other computer and related services’, growing 46% since 2013 to employ 32,060 people in 2018. In total, high tech employment has increased by close to 11% between 2015 and 2017, while graduate and undergraduate degrees in technology have increased by 12.6% over the same time period.
CBRE (Coldwell Banker) report, Scoring Canadian Tech Talent report, 2020 rankings, show that Vancouver is third highest ranked Canadian city for tech talent (based on talent availability, quality of labour and cost competitiveness).
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Salaries
Wages and salaries paid by British Columbia’s high tech sector climbed 7.6%, to $12.0 billion in 2019, the highest level ever recorded. The average weekly earnings of a tech worker in the province was $1,760 in 2019, compared to $1,000 per week for the average worker in the province as a whole. For service sector workers, tech workers earned almost double the average service sector wage ($1,830 per week, compared to $950). Across the Tech Industry, the growth in employment contributed to the rise in wages and salaries; there was also a 2.8% increment in average weekly earnings.
