Work From Home Is Here to Stay - Despite the RTO Headlines

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.

Full analysis on Wolf Street.

Pascal Finette @radical