Software Development: A Boom That Faded

By Raulin Cadet | Published Oct. 5, 2026 | Updated Oct. 5, 2026 | Topics: Canada, Unemployment, Technology, Employment, Economic cycle, Job market, Post-COVID, Tech job, Software developer

In this post, I look at how Canadian software development job postings compare with the broader market since the 2020 pandemic. I consider the sectors that saw the largest hiring booms of 2022, using data from Indeed Hiring Lab. Software development was not alone. Human resources and banking and finance also saw a peak, each climbing to more than double its pre-pandemic level, measured against its own value in February 2020. This post asks a simple question: did these three booms end the same way?

The graphic of this post shows that they did not. Postings for human resources now sit almost exactly where they started. Banking and finance remains comfortably above its pre-pandemic baseline. Software development is the exception: postings are still almost 23% below where they stood in February 2020. All three sectors started at the same point, but only software development is still below where it started.

Why, then, did software development fail to hold onto its gains?