Return-to-Office Barometer Tops 50% for First Time Since the Pandemic Began

For the first time since the lockdowns of the pandemic, Kastle’s weekly 10-city return-to-office barometer has reported an average office occupancy level of more than 50 percent.

The 10 major U.S. metros in Kastle’s survey—based on entry-card swipes—averaged 50.4 percent in office occupancy levels for the week ended January 25 (Kastle’s week runs from Wednesday to Wednesday, which is the day the workweek most often ends in the emerging patterns of the post-pandemic hybrid workplace).

In another post-pandemic first, all of the metros tracked in the survey achieved office occupancy averages of 40 percent or above, including the city with the most troubled office sector in the United States, San Francisco—which jumped more than two percentage points to nearly 46 percent.

Austin, which has led a U.S.-leading resurgence in office occupancies, approached 70 percent in the January 25 survey—and nearly 77 percent on the day during the week when it notched its highest occupancy level.

According to Kastle, which started to break out daily as well as weekly averages after hybrid work patterns were widely adopted, Tuesday has become the busiest day of the week for office occupancy, while everybody tends to disappear on Friday.

Like Austin, Houston, Chicago, and New York—which posted weekly averages of 60.3 percent, 50.6 percent, and 47.5 percent, respectively, in the January 25 survey—also surged on Tuesday, to 66 percent, 63.7 percent, and 59.5 percent.

While it’s probably too early to declare a trend, the upward post-holiday jump in the 10-city average—when compared to the track record of Kastle’s barometer for the past year—is an important milestone. After creeping up to 43 percent in March 2022, the 10-city average stalled at that level for the next six months. After Labor Day, the 10-city average bounced up to 47 percent, but then plateaued at that level for the rest of the year.

Keeping in mind that the 10-city average is an average of an average—in other words, the median level between Friday and Tuesday—if a new post-holiday plateau of between 50 percent and 60 percent in average occupancy remains steady, that will indeed be a hopeful sign for employers.

It’s been a busy week for hopeful signs, which taken as a whole appear to be signaling that what was shaping up to be our winter of economic discontent may have a happier ending than many of us expected, around the time the flowers bloom in May.

As the evidence continues to mount that the fever of inflation has finally broken—Tesla and Ford’s new electric Mustang are in a 0-60 drag race to see which brand can lower its prices faster—hope is rising that the Federal Reserve will signal that last week’s rate increase will be followed by a pause in rate hikes in May, during which the Fed may decide to take its foot off the fiscal brake.

The White House signaled this week that President Biden will declare an official end to the Covid-19 emergency in May, acknowledging the obvious: With each new variant—the CDC has stopped giving them names—the bug has gotten more infectious but less virulent.

Even better, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its growth outlook for the first time in a year this week, declaring a “turning point” for the global economy. The IMF says the threat of a global recession is “diminishing.”

From: BenefitsPRO