Tech sector contributed $4.7B to Sask. GDP

Report shows rapid growth in industry

Advocates of Saskatchewan’s technology sector say the numbers are finally in to prove how big of an impact the industry has on the province’s economy.

A new report commissioned by Sask. Interactive found the tech sector contributed $4.7 billion to Saskatchewan’s GDP in 2018, and represents 5.6 per cent of the province’s total GDP.

There are more than 5,000 tech companies employing 52,300 combined workers in the province. The report found Saskatchewan’s core tech sector has been seeing rapid growth, expanding 38 per cent since 2010 and 19 per cent since 2015.

Aaron Genest, chair of the advocacy organization Sask Tech, said one of every $20 earned in the province is earned by the tech industry.

“That’s pretty significant. I would consider that a big deal,” Genest said during a phone interview Thursday.

Genest said the main impetus for the report was to measure the tech sector for investment and support from the provincial government. Saskatchewan’s growth plan, which lays out the next decade of economic growth in the province, involves tripling the growth of the tech sector. Genest said this study now gives the government a baseline.

“They’ve had an intuition for some time that it was an important part of the provincial economy and that it was growing quickly. This helps quantify that,” said Genest.

Tina Beaudry-mellor, the minister responsible for Innovation Saskatchewan, said the data will be very useful to the province as it tries to keep Saskatchewan’s tech sector in a competitive position with Alberta and Manitoba.

“Everybody is using tech in some fashion right now and looking at ways to pivot existing business models, and so there’s tremendous, tremendous opportunity for our tech sector,” said Beaudry-mellor.

One thing in the report that surprised Genest was the number of small tech businesses in the province. Companies on average employ 13 people. More than half have no employees. Genest described these companies as likely being consultancies and private contractors.

Workers are also earning good salaries, with the average annual income sitting at $76,000. That may not be as high as other tech hubs such as San Francisco, but Saskatchewan’s lower cost of living helps workers retain as much disposable income as their Silicon Valley counterparts.

The biggest challenge facing Saskatchewan’s tech sector is talent. The top two concerns voiced in a survey in the report mention access to senior and intermediate labour. The report found the province’s small market size pushed workers into becoming a “jack of all trades” rather than being able to specialize.

David Gerhard, head of the University of Regina’s computer science department, said it isn’t shocking news that seeking experienced talent is a problem. Gerhard said this gap can be attributed to a dip in the number of people studying computer science in the early 2000s.

“The universities really need to work with the government to figure out how to supply this in-demand workforce in the future,” said Gerhard.

The big unknown now is what ramifications the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the burgeoning tech industry. Genest said some companies will contract and others will grow, but having data on where Saskatchewan stood before the pandemic hit will still be useful.

“This is excellent and essential data in fact for being able to develop good policy related to what’s going to be the result of the effects of COVID,” said Genest.