{"id":98189,"date":"2025-08-26T22:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T22:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/98189\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T22:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T22:37:07","slug":"from-boom-to-bust-canadian-tech-hiring-is-in-a-deep-freeze-with-early-career-workers-among-hardest-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/98189\/","title":{"rendered":"‘From boom to bust:’ Canadian tech hiring is in a deep-freeze with early-career workers among hardest hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Attendees Attendees wait for a career fair to begin in Burnaby, B.C. (Credit: Paige Taylor White\/Bloomberg files) <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s technology sector<\/a> is in the grips of a hiring deep freeze<\/a>, with the number of job postings down for a third straight year and early-career workers among the hardest hit, according to a new report from online job site Indeed Inc.<\/p>\n

The current number of listings is now 19 per cent below early 2020 levels, and well off pandemic-era hiring rates, when listings rose 35 per cent from 2019 to 2022 helped by low interest rates<\/a> and optimism in the sector, said Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at Indeed and author of the report.<\/p>\n

With the post-pandemic era ushering in rising interest rates and a more pessimistic growth outlook, tech hiring has now gone \u201cfrom boom to bust,\u201d Bernard said.<\/p>\n

While the pandemic hangover is the most likely culprit, the spectre of artificial intelligence<\/a> can\u2019t be ruled out either, he said.<\/p>\n

Bernard noted that it is difficult to measure the impact of artificial intelligence on Canadian tech hiring because job listings were declining well before the AI boom.<\/p>\n

Around half of the decline in tech postings between the 2022 peak and today materialized prior to ChatGPT<\/a>\u2019s release in late 2022, and the rapid decline in tech jobs in the first-half of 2023 occurred when the \u201cuse of generative AI was still in its infancy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, the growing mainstream use of AI may have \u201csignificantly reduced interest in hiring new tech workers\u201d and could explain why tech job postings have failed to rebound, Bernard wrote.<\/p>\n

AI-driven automation of many of the skills and tasks featured in tech job descriptions could be a factor, according to the report. Indeed\u2019s analysis found that there has been an increase in the number of senior-level tech roles since the pandemic, but that early-career job seekers have been less fortunate. In February 2025, senior and higher-level tech job postings were up five per cent from five years earlier, while standard and junior-level tech roles were down 25 per cent during the same timeframe.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a Stanford University study released on Tuesday uncovered \u201csubstantial\u201d employment declines for early-career workers in jobs heavily-exposed to AI such as software development and customer service.<\/p>\n

At the same time, demand for AI-related tech roles is growing. The number of job postings for AI developers and architects \u2014 previously uncommon positions \u2014 has more than doubled since early 2020, according to Indeed data. And while listings for machine learning engineers have dropped 49 per cent since 2022, the decline is much less than for other tech roles and remains up by 38 per cent from 2020.\u00a0And while hiring appetite for new workers may have dipped, the number of people working in applied sciences roles, such as tech and mathematics but excluding engineering, remains 35 per cent higher than in 2019, \u201cfar outpacing the 10 per cent economy-wide growth over the same period,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attendees wait for a career fair to begin in Burnaby, B.C. (Credit: Paige Taylor White\/Bloomberg files) Canada\u2019s technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,63,36809,99,71953,36811,180,1996],"class_list":{"0":"post-98189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-brendon-bernard","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-job-listings","13":"tag-job-postings","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}