Halifax has slipped two places to eighth spot in CBRE ranking of Canadian tech talent markets, as the strong hiring boom of 2013-2015 lost its oomph.

CBRE Canada last week issued the report titled Scoring Canadian Tech Talent, which ranked Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver as the top three centres for human resources in technology in Canada. Halifax had claimed the No. 6 spot in the same report last year, but has fallen in the past year due to a lack of employment growth in 2016.

The report is not completely gloomy about the tech community in Halifax, and it highlights the startup community and the opportunities created by the nascent oceans technology initiative.

“The presence of Volta Labs has helped to develop the tech sector in Halifax and spark entrepreneurial action,” said the CBRE report. “The Centre for Ocean Ventures & Entrepreneurship (COVE) is developing a $20 million institute on the Harbourfront to support ocean technology development and commercialization. Marine Bio-Tech has found a home in Halifax due to its accessibility to open waters and deep-water dock access.”

CBRE rates 10 cities based on several metrics, and in the major categories, Halifax places eighth in tech talent employment, sixth in education, seventh in high-tech clustering and fourth in cost competitiveness.

The report said there were 11,000 people employed in tech positions in Halifax in 2016, an increase of 25 percent over five years, better than the national growth rate over the half-decade. The numbers are disappointing given that Halifax had shown signs of accelerating growth in the 2016 report.

The CBRE report includes a category called the “Momentum Growth Rate”, which charts growth or shrinkage in tech employment in the two most recent years. In the report last year, Halifax had the second-strongest momentum in the country as tech employment in the city increased 54 percent over two years to 2015. In the 2017 report, the category actually showed a decline of 6.7 percent.

Halifax rates as having a “good” pool of tech talent, the lowest rating in the survey. CBRE assesses talent based on the number and concentration of software engineers who have graduated from leading institutions and have at least three years of job experience.

Halifax performs best in the cost comparisons to other cities. CBRE assesses the costs of operating a 500-person operation in terms of office rent and salaries, and Halifax is the second-least expensive. It says Halifax is about 23 percent less expensive than the highest-price market, Calgary. Only London, Ont., is cheaper.

Halifax also performs well in the educational rankings, though there may be cause for concern. Some 36 percent of the city’s work force have university degrees, a level exceeded only by Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. But the CBRE report also assesses the coming growth rate in the number of people with degrees over the next five years, and Halifax comes in dead last with an expected growth rate of 10.2 percent.