When you follow the news headlines these days, the pervasive trail would lead you to think that RTO (Return to Office) is the order-of-the-day and we, collectively, are returning to a world of people in offices. Alas, when you look at the data, we are far from it:
The average occupancy in the top 10 office markets in the latest week was still only at 54% of where it had been before Covid, so still down by 46% from pre-Covid, and only a few percentage points higher of where it had been at the same time in 2023, and just a hair higher than at the same time in 2024.
When you look at the data from the opposite side – people working from home – you see the same picture emerge:
But as the economy reopened, those service workers were called back, and the share of WFH as a percent of overall full paid days plunged. But for office workers, WFH has remained a big factor. As a result, the share of full paid days worked from home remains at far higher levels than before Covid and has not come down further in 2023, 2024, and in January 2025.
