New York has overtaken the San Francisco Bay Area as North America’s largest tech talent market for the first time in the 13 years CBRE has tracked the measure, a shift with direct consequences for office demand in both metros.
The New York metro area counted 394,300 tech talent workers in 2025 against the Bay Area’s 375,730, according to CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2026 report, released Aug. 18. Both regions added more than 20,000 AI jobs since mid-2025, but the Bay Area’s total was held down by layoffs among non-AI technology workers.
The headcount crown does not translate to an overall win. On CBRE’s composite Tech Talent Scorecard — which weighs factors including average salary, office and apartment rents, educational output and concentration — the Bay Area still ranks first, with Seattle second, Toronto third and New York fourth. Austin, Washington, D.C., Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Vancouver and Canada’s Waterloo Region round out the top 10.
AI reshapes the labor pool
The report describes an industry restructuring around artificial intelligence rather than simply growing. North America’s AI-skilled workforce reached 751,000, a 45% increase year over year. AI-related roles accounted for 31% of U.S. tech job postings as of June 2026, up from 11% in mid-2022. In the Bay Area, AI postings hit a 57% share, up from 20%.
That growth sits alongside significant contraction. CBRE counted 101,743 AI-related job cuts across all industries in 2026 through June, or 22.9% of all cuts in that period. The technology industry accounted for 31% of 2026 job cuts through June, compared with 13% for all of 2025.
Employment growth has also cooled sharply. U.S. tech talent employment rose 1.8%, or 108,760 jobs, in 2025 — down from a 7.3% peak in 2022 that added roughly 405,000 positions. Canada grew faster, at 7.6% or 91,300 jobs.
A striking finding for where those jobs now sit: since 2022, the finance, insurance and real estate sector added 90,530 tech jobs while the high-tech industry itself shed 21,262. Tech talent is increasingly employed outside tech companies.
Why office landlords are watching
The report’s most consequential finding for commercial real estate concerns work location. Fully remote arrangements have declined as employers shifted to hybrid schedules of three or more days in-office. In San Francisco, remote job postings fell to 7% in April 2026 from 24% in mid-2022. The national average for remote tech jobs stands at 18%.
AI companies in particular largely require full-time, in-person work — a pattern that has already moved the San Francisco office market, where AI-related companies accounted for 30% of office leasing activity since 2023. The Bay Area has captured 80% of U.S. AI venture funding since 2020, according to the report.
Costs still separate the markets sharply. CBRE estimates the total annual operating cost for a 500-person tech company occupying 60,000 square feet ranges from $36 million in Quebec City to $91 million in the San Francisco Bay Area. The U.S. tech wage premium has narrowed to 15% above the average worker, down from 18% in 2023.
Where growth is fastest
Toronto added the most tech jobs of any market since 2022, at 75,000, followed by Dallas-Fort Worth with 37,230. By growth rate, Calgary led at 56%, then Waterloo Region (37%), Nashville (34%), Toronto (27%), Jacksonville (23%) and Dallas-Fort Worth (19%).
Nashville climbed six spots in the overall ranking, the largest move, with Montreal and Jacksonville each up four and Pittsburgh up three. CBRE also flagged Huntsville, Ala., Halifax, Colorado Springs, Dayton and London, Ontario, as top emerging “opportunity markets.”
Only five markets exceed a 10% tech talent concentration in their overall workforce: Ottawa, Waterloo Region, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle. The 50-market average is 5.5%.
What it means
For office landlords, the report supports a case that has been building through 2026: tech tenants are once again a source of net absorption, but concentrated in AI firms with in-person mandates rather than spread across the sector. That distinction matters for underwriting — a market with 400,000 tech workers whose employers accept remote work generates far less space demand than one where AI startups need everyone at a desk.
New York’s ascent to the top of the headcount rankings also reflects the FIRE-sector hiring CBRE documented, meaning much of that tech employment is housed in banks, insurers and real estate firms already leasing traditional office space rather than in new tech-campus demand. Whether the shift produces materially different leasing outcomes in Manhattan than in the Bay Area is not something the report projects, and it remains an open question.
The findings arrive as the San Francisco market shows other signs of stabilization, including apartment vacancy falling to a quarter-century low and renewed investor appetite for offices there, such as Strada Investment Group’s $103 million office purchase. CBRE has separately reported that data center vacancy has hit record lows as the same AI buildout strains power capacity.
