Before the pandemic lockdowns, nearly all work took place in an office environment with standard 9-to-5 work hours.
Only a small percentage of people, approximately 13%, worked outside the traditional workday setting.
Today, post-pandemic, the number of people working off-peak hours stands at 20%, while the number of people working traditional 9-to-5 hours is down to 80%.
“In 2023, we had assumed we were finally near an equilibrium in hybrid work, with people coming to the office ~2.7 days per week, but in fact, we’ve seen workplace attendance increase even more in 2024, to an average of over 3.0 days per week (and still climbing),” reads a report from Bevi co-founder and CEO, Sean Grundy.
Data from the Placer.ai Nationwide Office Building Index confirms that workers are increasingly returning to the office.
“Employers from local governments to major corporations are tightening their return-to-office … policies – cracking down on practices like coffee-badging,” where an employee comes into the office and stays only briefly, usually just long enough to grab a coffee, before heading home again, “and requiring employees to relocate closer to the workplace,” reads a blog entry from Placer.ai.
Forbes lists five advantages of working in an office rather than at home: making friends, learning from others, being more engaged, performing better, and receiving better pay and promotions.
Realtor.com analyzes the Placer.ai data and the highest office attendance rates seen since the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s the start of the story:
More and more people are logging off Zoom and heading back to the office.
New data from the Placer.ai Nationwide Office Building Index has found that office foot traffic nationwide has reached 72.2% of July 2019 levels. This amounts to the highest office attendance rates seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The top five cities with the highest percentage of office visits are Miami, at 90.6%; New York City, at 89.6%; Dallas, at 76.9%; Atlanta, at 76.7%; and Washington, DC, at 73.9%..
While these numbers suggest that more employees are ditching fully remote work, a hybrid model seems to remain the new normal—and this has affected where people live and shop for homes.
“The pandemic seems to have shifted buyer preferences to some degree,” says Hannah Jones, Realtor.com® senior economic research analyst. “Many home shoppers are looking to balance their personal and professional lives by buying in areas that are close enough to the office to commute a few days a week, but offer more space, lower prices, and a slower-paced lifestyle than a large metro.”