Chapter 3

How diverse are Tech Talent markets?

Scoring Tech Talent 2026

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Tech talent diversity by race/ethnicity and sex has improved slowly. Workforce dispersion and demographic analytics have created opportunities to increase diversity.

Strategic approaches to diverse team building can be enhanced by greater use of data and benchmarking analytics that identify where diverse talent is located and being developed. Our analysis details workforce race/ethnicity and sex by geography and industry. College tech degree graduates' race/ethnicity and sex was also analyzed by geography. Workforce diversity for these categories used office-using industries as the benchmark for comparison. If tech talent diversity was below this benchmark, there was underrepresentation.

Industry Diversity

Tech talent across all industries has been little changed over the past five years and remains predominantly White, Asian and male relative to total employment and office-using employment. U.S. Census Bureau data from 2024 shows that Hispanics, Blacks, other non-Whites, non-Asians and females were underrepresented (Figure 27). The Hispanic, Black and Other race/ethnicity categories combined accounted for 29.4% of the office-using workforce and 23.8% of the tech talent workforce in the U.S. In Canada, underrepresented race/ethnicity groups have a small share of tech talent employment (13.5%) and are closely aligned with office-using industries (14.1%) (Figure 28).

Female Diversity

Females were the most underrepresented group within the tech talent workforce (Figure 27), comprising 25% of the tech talent workforce across all industries and 21% within the tech industry. Females accounted for 31% of all occupations within the tech industry in the U.S., below the 48% share of total employment and 50% share of the office-using workforce.

In Canada, females comprised 22% of tech occupations within the tech industry and 25% across all industries (Figure 28). They were 49% of Canada's total workforce and 46% of the office-using workforce.

Figure 27: U.S. Workforce by Race/Ethnicity for Selected Industries (2024)

Note: Office-using includes occupations that are typically performed in an office setting (excluding tech talent).
Source: U.S. Census, IPUMS, Statistics Canada, CBRE Research, May 2026.

Figure 28: Canada Workforce by Race/Ethnicity for Selected Industries (2024)

Note: Office-using includes occupations that are typically performed in an office setting (excluding tech talent).
Source: U.S. Census, IPUMS, Statistics Canada, CBRE Research, May 2026.

Tech Degree Graduate Diversity & Current Enrollment

The pipeline of recent tech degree graduates offers opportunities to build the next generation of talent and use analytics to measure success. These graduates, like the existing tech talent workforce, were predominantly White, Asian and male.

Of the 383,000 U.S. tech degree graduates in 2024, 27% were from underrepresented race/ethnicity groups and 27% were female (Figure 29). Underrepresented race/ethnicity groups accounted for 33% of total college graduates in 2024 and females accounted for 59%. Asian, Hispanic and other race/ethnicity groups have materially increased their shares of tech degrees since 2010, while Blacks have increased slightly and the share of Whites has declined. The share of females has grown by 5 percentage points.

Compared with the existing tech talent workforce, the share of tech degree graduates from underrepresented groups (27%) exceeded existing workers (24%), as did female tech degree graduates (27%) compared with existing workers (25%). This is a positive indicator of future tech talent diversity.

Figure 29: U.S. Tech Degree Graduate's Race/Ethnicity & Sex (2024)

Note: Total U.S. tech degree graduates and male/female breakdown includes foreigners.
Race/ethnicity breakdown excludes unknown races and foreigners.
Source: IPEDS, CBRE Research, April 2026.

Tech Talent Diversity Progress

Greater diversity of the tech talent workforce should continue to slowly progress. Our review of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission diversity data and publicly released data from private tech companies confirms this. Accelerating the pace of workforce diversity is both a challenge and an opportunity.

Technology will be critical to support the new hybrid approach to work, in which team members can work either in the office, remotely or from widely dispersed locations. This hybrid approach shows promise to expand tech talent recruitment across all markets and increase workforce diversity.

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Chapter 4 What are the highest- and lowest-cost markets to operate in?
Chapter 2 What defines a Tech Talent market?