Even though employment opportunities are diverse, Greater Montréal has the advantage of offering the opportunity to work in several high-tech, structured sectors for which the metropolis is recognized around the globe.
Greater Montréal’s Biggest Strength: its Creativity
It is because of its creativity that Greater Montréal is so widely celebrated: video games, visual effects, film and television production, fashion, circuses and show and event engineering, to name a few.
Beyond these industries that are renowned by the general public on an international scale, the knowledge economy makes Greater Montréal an employer of choice in several state of the art sectors like aerospace, information and communications technologies, life sciences and health technologies, clean technologies, logistics and transport and financial services.
The major employers in these innovative sectors are grouped within industrial clusters.
Local Champions That Excel
Greater Montréal is home to several Québécois and Canadian flagship companies like Bombardier, CAE, CGI, Pharmascience and SNC-Lavalin.
These industry leaders are supported by a whole network of intermediary companies, often benefiting from tax incentives that encourage them to hire young graduates – particularly those in research and development.
Besides well-established business, the startup ecosystem is booming with close to $1 billion dollar in VC financing in Montréal in 2018. There are more than 30 incubators/accelerators and 45 coworking spaces in Greater Montréal.
Greater Montréal Attracts Foreign Companies and International Organizations
Several foreign companies started to recognize the strength and vitality of Greater Montréal and established their companies within it over the past few decades. The metropolitan area now hosts more than 2,230 subsidiaries of foreign companies, including Ericsson, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, IBM, Pratt & Whitney and Ubisoft.
Montréal is also the Canadian capital of international organizations, both governmental and non-governmental. More than sixty organizations have established themselves in the area, sometimes even choosing it as the location for their world headquarters. Some of these include the International Civil Aviation Organization, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics and the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Find out more
Industry Clusters in Greater Montréal
- Aerospace (Aéro Montréal et AéroPortail)
- Aluminum (AluQuébec)
- Film and Television (Québec Film and Television Council)
- Fashion (mmode)
- Logistics and Transport (Cargo M)
- Life Sciences and Health Technologies (Montréal InVivo)
- Financial Services (Finance Montréal)
- ICT (Techno Montréal)
- Clean Technologies (Écotech Québec)
Other useful links
- Directory of Business Sectors in Québec (Emploi Québec, in French only)
- Directory of Companies in Québec (Emploi Québec, in French only)
- The 500 Largest Companies in Québec (Les Affaires, in French only)
- The 300 Largest SMBs in Québec (Les Affaires, in French only)
- Subsidiaries of Foreign Companies in Greater Montréal (Montréal International)
- Videos of High-tech Sectors in Greater Montréal (Tourisme Montréal)
