Between all the headline-making advancements in artificial intelligence, the myriad American tech giants opening up offices north of the border, and Google's choice of location for its neighbourhood of the future, it's well-known at this point that Toronto's tech sector is on fire.

What many may not realize is just how fast this critical industry is exploding.

A new report from the commercial real estate company CBRE reveals that Toronto is now North America's third-best market for tech talent, falling behind only San Francisco's Bay Area (read: Silicon Valley) and Seattle.

"Toronto's pool of tech talent grew at the fastest pace of all 50 markets measured, adding an eye-popping 80,100 tech jobs in the past five years — a 54 per cent increase," writes CBRE of its 2019 Scoring Tech Talent report, released on Tuesday.

"Toronto nearly equalled the number of tech jobs created in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2013."

Toronto is North America’s No. 3 market for tech employees, coming in just behind the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle in CBRE’s 2019 Scoring Tech Talent report. Toronto added an eye-popping 80,100 tech jobs in the past five years. Read the report here: https://t.co/nhVqxgjToS pic.twitter.com/abZCN7Jlcj

— CBRE Canada (@cbreCanada) July 16, 2019

The only Canadian city to crack the top 10 this year, Toronto earned an overall score of 69.88 out of 100 based on 13 metrics, including job concentration, talent supply, market growth, completed degrees and industry outlook for tech job growth.

The San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle earned scores of 84.79 and 73.82, respectively, while Washington, D.C. pulled up fourth place with a score of 69.83, followed by New York at 65.12.

Vancouver rose a whopping 13 spots over its ranking in last year's CBRE tech talent report to come in at spot number 12.

Montreal, meanwhile, earned a respectable spot number 13 on the list thanks in large part to being the most cost-effective of all 50 markets studied.

"We hear about tech more and more, but in a thriving city like Toronto, the impact of tech companies and the growing influence of tech talent cannot be overstated," said CBRE's Paul Morassutti of this year's ranking in a release.

"Toronto, San Francisco and Seattle are comfortably mentioned in the same sentence and are attracting the best in the industry."

Imagine how many more superstars we'd nab if Toronto tech companies paid employees as much as their American counterparts.