Hybrid work patterns reveal occupancy varies throughout the week with Tuesdays typically being the highest day of the week and Fridays being the lowest. The chart below tracks Tuesday occupancy over time in ten cities and provides a new dimension to the weekly Barometer report. The Peak Day Hybrid Index will now be published weekly, offering a wider aperture into the full picture of workplace occupancy.
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Office Occupancy Falls Slightly; Class A+ Buildings Hit Record Highs
Peak day office occupancy was 63.3% on Tuesday last week, down less than a point from the previous week. Peak day occupancy in Los Angeles fell 4.7 points to 53.5% as protests may have kept workers away from the office. Chicago hit 74% occupancy on Tuesday, its highest single day since the start of the pandemic, and Washington, D.C. matched its post-pandemic peak set the previous week, holding steady at 64.1% on Tuesday. The average low was on Friday at 35.2%.
Weekly average occupancy fell six tenths of a point from the previous week to 53.7%, according to the 10-city Back to Work Barometer. Los Angeles dropped over three points to 48%, while most tracked cities experienced only small decreases. Chicago and New York reached post-pandemic record highs, rising 1.1 points to 58.9% and seven tenths of a point to 55.8%, respectively.
Last week, average occupancy among the Barometer’s Class A+ buildings was 78%, a high for the year, and Class A+ peak day occupancy reached a post-pandemic single-day record high of 95.6% last Tuesday. We will continue to provide insights from this subset of over 100 buildings within the Barometer dataset, which have been categorized as Class A+.
Methodology
To provide some clarity on the issues facing American businesses, Kastle has been studying keycard, fob and KastlePresence app access data from the 2,600 buildings and 41,000 businesses we secure across 47 states. We’re analyzing the anonymized data to identify trends in how Americans are returning to the office.
We have tracked and published U.S. office occupancy status in Kastle-secured commercial properties since the beginning of the Covid crisis in early 2020. We continue to seek to help companies navigate the ever-changing workplace landscape and adjust to the ‘new normal’ of office occupancy. Whether full-time hybrid or in-person, our commitment remains to helping American businesses understand how average workplaces are being attended weekly, monthly, and annually.
Kastle’s reach of buildings, businesses and cardholders secured generates millions of access events daily as users enter office complexes, and individual company workspaces. The Barometer weekly report summarizes access control data among our business partners in ten major metro areas, not a national statistical sample. Charted percentages reflect unique authorized user entries in each market relative to a pre-COVID baseline, averaged weekly.*
*On March 22, 2021, Kastle moved from daily to weekly data reporting to provide a more robust and comprehensive picture of office occupancy. We have also recalculated data back to the start of the time series for consistency. This has only a marginal impact on most cities and the national average.
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