Defining Canada’s Digital Economy

Canada’s digital economy is growing rapidly, while AI and digital technologies are transforming tasks, skills, and workflows across sectors. Despite the scale of this transformation, a straightforward question remains difficult to answer with precision: how big is Canada's digital economy, and who exactly works in it? 

In its Going Digital Measurement Roadmap, the OECD called for an international recognition that national statistical systems need to adapt and expand to adequately reflect this digitalization of our economies and societies, with evidence bases that can help countries identify where digital divides exist and those most at risk from disruption. This report presents ICTC’s new framework for defining and measuring Canada’s digital economy, establishing a consistent approach to tracking digital growth and its impact on the workforce. It gives policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders a common foundation for understanding employment trends, skills needs, and technological change.

Key Takeaways

• ICTC estimates that Canada’s digital economy workforce totalled approximately 2.7 million workers as of June 2026 under this modernized definition. This includes about 2.5 million workers across 55 digital occupations and approximately 200,000 workers in non-digital occupations across digital economy sectors.
• The framework groups digital workers into four occupational tiers based on how central digital work is to their occupation: Core Digital, Digital-Enabled, Digital-Adjacent, and Digital-Intensive.
• ICTC identifies 26 industries across six functional categories as the structural core of Canada’s digital economy: hardware, software, support services, telecommunications, e-commerce, and digital media. The framework also captures digital occupations in sectors beyond these industries.
• ICTC’s performance measurement framework integrates more than 50 indicators across three dimensions: Digital Capacity and Foundations, Digital Industries and Economic Activity, and Inclusivity and Workforce Outcomes. Several indicators in this framework capture dimensions not currently tracked in existing Canadian statistical sources, including an AI Impact Score, an AI Readiness Gap, and a Digital Economy Labour Productivity measure.