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Toronto · City guide · ON

Toronto: the full picture

Toronto is Canada's money and head-office town: the five big banks, the two big life insurers, the stock exchange and three of the country's largest pension funds are all run from a few blocks downtown, and finance, insurance and real estate alone employ about 455,000 people in the metro. Around that core sits the largest professional-services, tech and health-research workforce in the country, a 47-million-passenger airport, a film industry doing about $2 billion a year, and a manufacturing belt in the outer suburbs that is now exposed to US tariffs. The region added almost no population in 2025 after a decade of fast growth, unemployment spiked to 9% in mid-2025 before easing, and condo construction has fallen by roughly a third.

Toronto
7,108,874Population, Toronto CMA (flat on 2024)July 1, 2025 · Statistics Canada Table 17-10-0148-01
3.74 millionEmployed, annual average2025 · Statistics Canada Table 14-10-0461-01
6.7%Unemployment rate (peak 9.0% in July 2025)August 2026 · Statistics Canada, The Daily: LFS August 2026
18.0%Youth (15-24) unemployment rate, annual2025 · Statistics Canada Table 14-10-0461-01
$522.4 billionGDP at basic prices, Toronto CMA2022 · Statistics Canada Table 36-10-0468-01
$111,320Median total income, couple families2023 · Statistics Canada Table 11-10-0012-01
C$7.25 trillionTSX market capitalization, 2,272 issuersAugust 31, 2026 · TSX MiG Report, August 2026
$880 million / 64 dealsVenture capital invested in Toronto, first city in CanadaH1 2026 · CVCA Intelligence VC Market Overview Q2 2026
14.9%Office vacancy, Toronto overallQ2 2026 · Cushman & Wakefield Canada Office MarketBeat Q2 2026
26,087Housing starts, Toronto CMA (down 31% from 37,718 in 2024)2025 · Statistics Canada Table 34-10-0154-01 (CMHC)
47.3 millionPassengers at Toronto Pearson2025 · GTAA Reports 2025 Annual Results
C$2.2 billionFilm/TV/digital production spend in Toronto (record C$2.6B in 2022)2024 · Olsberg SPI report for the City of Toronto

01Scale

The Toronto census metropolitan area had 7,108,874 residents on July 1, 2025, essentially flat on 2024 (7,109,866) after growing by roughly 270,000 the year before. The labour force averaged 4.09 million in 2025 with 3.74 million employed; the annual unemployment rate was 8.6%, up from 8.0% in 2024 and 6.3% in 2023. Statistics Canada's most recent metro GDP figure puts Toronto at $522.4 billion at basic prices for 2022, the largest of any Canadian CMA.

02The labour market has been rough, and is now healing

Toronto's unemployment rate hit a recent high of 9.0% in July 2025 and was 6.7% in August 2026, still above the national 6.4% but well down over the year. Youth (15-24) unemployment in the metro averaged 18.0% in 2025, against 7.3% for adults 25 and over. Employment in 2025 still grew by about 67,000 to 3.74 million, but the labour force grew faster, which is why the rate rose.

03What people actually do

Of 3.74 million employed in 2025, professional, scientific and technical services was the largest industry at 536,600, followed by wholesale and retail trade (509,200), finance, insurance and real estate (455,000), health care and social assistance (405,000) and manufacturing (347,100). The goods-producing sector is only 590,200 jobs (16%); construction is 212,200 and transportation and warehousing 227,400. Year over year, finance (+12,200), professional services (+10,700), information/culture/recreation (+16,800) and accommodation/food (+16,100) grew, while business support services (-4,600), education (-1,200) and health care (-3,600) slipped.

04Finance: the exchange, the banks, the pensions

Toronto Stock Exchange listed 2,272 issuers with a combined market capitalization of C$7.25 trillion at August 31, 2026 (3,768 issuers and C$7.40 trillion including TSX Venture), and issuers raised C$27.0 billion in equity in the first eight months of 2026, up 82% on the same period of 2025. Toronto Global counts about 10,000 financial-services businesses employing over 270,000 people in the region, with all five big banks and 41 international banks' Canadian head offices here. Three of the world's largest pension investors are also run from Toronto: CPP Investments (C$863.6 billion at June 30, 2026), Ontario Teachers' (C$303.2 billion) and OMERS (C$151.6 billion).

05Venture capital

Toronto was Canada's leading VC city in the first half of 2026 with $880 million invested across 64 deals, ahead of Montreal ($619 million, 50 deals); Ontario took $1.12 billion, 42% of the national $2.69 billion. Nationally, 2025 was a down year ($8.0 billion across 571 deals, dollars down 6%, deal count down 12%) with no IPOs, and Ontario represented just over half of dollars. The pattern CVCA flags is thin domestic growth-stage capital: foreign investors took part in 56% of later-stage rounds in H1 2026, up from 30% a year earlier.

06Tech, AI and life sciences

Toronto Global cites CBRE's 2023 tech-talent scoring for a tech workforce of over 285,000, the third-largest pool in North America after the Bay Area and New York; Statistics Canada's broader professional/scientific/technical category was 536,600 jobs in 2025. The anchor AI companies are Cohere (Toronto-headquartered, US$500 million round at a US$6.8 billion valuation in August 2025) and the Vector Institute. The life-sciences cluster is the Discovery District around University Avenue: Toronto Global counts more than 1,400 life-sciences establishments in the region, 37 research institutes and nine teaching hospitals, though CVCA data shows national life-sciences VC fell 39% in H1 2026 to its lowest first-half on record.

07Screen production

Film, TV and digital-media production spent a record C$2.6 billion in Toronto in 2022, fell to C$1.6 billion in the 2023 strike year and recovered to about C$2.2 billion in 2024, according to the Olsberg SPI study commissioned by the City. The City's Film Office puts the workforce at 40,000 and studio space at about 3 million square feet (Pinewood Toronto, Cinespace and others), and Council adopted a 2026-2030 screen strategy in 2025 that names studio capacity and employment-land loss as the binding constraints.

08Real estate and construction

Housing starts in the Toronto CMA fell from 37,718 units in 2024 to 26,087 in 2025 (-31%), with apartment/condo starts down from 28,162 to 18,986; January-August 2026 starts (15,957) are running 3% below the same months of 2025, and the August 2026 seasonally adjusted annual rate was 13,892. Even so, 91,584 units were still under construction in August 2026, the tail of the earlier boom. Offices are stabilizing rather than recovering: overall Toronto office vacancy was 14.9% in Q2 2026 on 188.6 million square feet, with 2.3 million square feet of positive absorption that quarter driven almost entirely by delivery of one fully pre-leased 1.4 million square foot downtown tower.

09Gateway: airport and port

Toronto Pearson handled 47.3 million passengers in 2025, up 1.1% on 2024, and the GTAA's revenue was $2.08 billion. The marine Port of Toronto is small by comparison: 2.16 million tonnes of cargo on 167 vessels in 2025, mostly road salt, sugar and cement for the GTA construction trade, with an estimated $460 million economic impact. Note that the port's operator rebranded from PortsToronto to the Toronto Port Authority; it also owns Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.

10Manufacturing and tariffs

Manufacturing still employs 347,100 people in the Toronto CMA (9.3% of jobs), flat on 2024, concentrated in the 905 belt rather than the city proper. The clearest tariff casualty is Stellantis's Brampton Assembly Plant, idled since early 2024 with roughly 3,000 workers on layoff: in October 2025 Stellantis moved the next Jeep Compass to Belvidere, Illinois, citing tariffs, and in August 2026 told Unifor it was opening talks to sell the plant, after Ottawa had issued a notice of default on more than $220 million already disbursed toward a retooling package. Statistics Canada notes that industries dependent on US export demand ran a 0.9% average layoff rate over the year to August 2026, versus 0.7% elsewhere.

AnchorsThe companies and institutions that set demand here

Cohere

Enterprise and sovereign large-language-model company (Command, North, Embed, Rerank)

Toronto-headquartered; raised US$500 million at US$6.8 billion valuation in August 2025

TechCrunch, Aug 14, 2025

OMERS

Ontario municipal employees' pension; C$151.6 billion net assets at June 30, 2026

Toronto-based; major real-estate and infrastructure owner (Oxford Properties)

About OMERS

EcosystemWho helps a business start and grow

MaRS Discovery District

Incubator

Urban innovation hub at College and University: startup membership, accelerators, MaRS Capital program, lab and office space at MaRS Centre and MaRS Waterfront

marsdd.com ↗

OneEleven

Workspace

Membership community and workspace for venture-backed scale-ups (alumni include Wealthsimple, Borrowell, Koho, 1Password); site updated March 2026

oneeleven.com ↗

Toronto Global

Public agency

Regional foreign-direct-investment attraction agency for the Toronto Region; industry desks for finance, tech, AI, life sciences, film, advanced manufacturing

torontoglobal.ca ↗

Toronto Region Board of Trade

Chamber / board of trade

Chamber of commerce for the region: Trade Accelerator Program, AI Business Catalyst, US-tariff support for SMEs, World Trade Centre Toronto

bot.com/home ↗

Invest Ontario

Public agency

Provincial investment-attraction agency; reports over $15.1B in announced investments and 14,100 jobs, including recent Toronto tech hubs (Lyft, Heidi, ZS)

investontario.ca ↗

SectorsWhere the jobs are

WatchWhat changes the picture next

  • Unemployment fell from a 9.0% peak in July 2025 to 6.7% in August 2026, but youth unemployment was still 18% for 2025 as a whole

    Hiring conditions are loosening for employers, yet entry-level talent is abundant and underused; expect wage pressure to stay low outside specialist roles

  • Population growth stopped: the CMA's July 1 estimate slipped by about 1,000 to 7,108,874 in 2025 after adding roughly 270,000 the year before

    The demand engine behind rentals, retail and transit ridership has stalled; business plans built on 2-4% annual population growth need revisiting

  • Condo and housing construction contracted: starts fell 31% in 2025 and are down again in 2026, with apartment starts a third below 2024

    Fewer new units after 2027-28 once the current 91,584-unit pipeline completes; trades and suppliers face a shrinking book while buyers get short-term choice

  • US tariffs on autos and steel: Stellantis moved Jeep Compass from Brampton to Illinois (Oct 2025) and is now weighing a sale of the idled plant (Aug 2026); Ottawa has served a notice of default

    The 905 manufacturing belt is the most trade-exposed part of the metro; Statistics Canada finds layoff rates higher in US-export-dependent industries

  • Office vacancy held at 14.9% in Q2 2026; a 1.4 million sq ft pre-leased downtown tower delivered and only 1.9 million sq ft remains under construction nationally, the least in 14 years

    Premium space is tightening while older Class B stock stays soft; tenants can still negotiate hard outside the newest towers

  • Equity capital raising on TSX/TSXV is up 82% year-to-date (C$27.0B through August 2026) with 13 IPOs versus 2 a year earlier, while venture-backed IPOs remain at zero

    Public markets have reopened for mining, tech and mid-caps, but startups still exit by M&A; growth-stage rounds increasingly need US investors

  • Rogers agreed in July 2026 to buy Kilmer's remaining 25% of MLSE for C$4.35 billion, taking full ownership of the Leafs, Raptors and Scotiabank Arena; Loblaw sold PC Financial to EQB on July 1, 2026

    Sports, media and venue spending in the downtown core consolidates under one Toronto owner; a long-standing retail-banking brand changes hands

Not verifiedWhat we could not confirm

  • A current (2025 or 2026) CBRE Scoring Tech Talent figure for Toronto: cbre.ca and cbre.com returned 403; the only fetchable number is Toronto Global's citation of CBRE 2023 (285,000+ tech workers).
  • A Toronto-specific (rather than Ontario) split in CVCA's public year-end 2025 report; the Toronto $880M/64-deal figure is from the H1 2026 interactive report only.
  • BMO's legal head office (Montreal vs Toronto): BMO corporate-information pages returned 404/connection errors; only Toronto datelines were verifiable.
  • Employee counts for Scotiabank, BMO, Sun Life, Rogers, Thomson Reuters, Loblaw, Celestica, Cohere and Wealthsimple: not stated on any page fetched this session.
  • Toronto Pearson's economic-impact or employment figures: the GTAA site is behind a bot challenge; only the 2025 results release via newswire was readable.
  • City of Toronto Economic Dashboard indicators (weekly office vacancy, TTC ridership, building permits): the dashboard is a JavaScript application whose values were not retrievable.
  • Downtown-only office vacancy from CBRE or Colliers Q2 2026 (both 403); the 14.9% figure is Cushman & Wakefield's Toronto overall market.
  • 2025 film production spend for Toronto: the City's Olsberg SPI study only projects 2024 (~C$2.2B); no 2025 annual figure was published on a fetchable page.
  • A metro GDP figure more recent than 2022 (Statistics Canada's CMA GDP table ends at 2022).
  • Median household income after tax for the CMA; only census-family median total income (2023) was pulled.