Finally The First City Has Topped Its Prepandemic Office Usage
New York City office is finally back.
Office visits in the Big Apple surpassed prepandemic levels for the first time last month, with visits up 1.3% this July compared to July 2019, according to a new study from Placer.ai.
New York's finance companies, like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have adopted stricter in-office protocols than the overall workforce, which helped the city gain return-to-office momentum.
This is the first time any major city Placer.ai tracks has closed the prepandemic RTO visit gap. Nationwide, July set a new record for postpandemic office attendance, with visits down 21.8% compared to July 2019.
The majority of Fortune 100 employees were subject to full-time in-office mandates last quarter, up from just 5% in Q2 2023, according to Placer.ai.
Miami, which also boasts a sizable financial sector, followed closely behind New York in RTO metrics, just 0.1% below its July 2019 baseline. Atlanta and Dallas also beat the national average growth but are still 20% below their 2019 levels.
On a year-over-year basis, San Francisco saw the biggest jump with a 21.6% increase. Houston was second with 19.1% YOY growth, and Washington, D.C., rounded out the top three with 17%.
The news follows a June JLL report that found nearly 3 in 5 large-scale organizations are prioritizing a rise in on-site employee presence. Roughly 37% of organizations said they have increased attendance expectations over the past year, with the remainder maintaining previous levels.
Just over half of survey respondents reduced their overall footprint over the past year, while 42% enacted office attendance mandates. Thirty-eight percent have completed space design changes, 34% have implemented or improved workplace experience programs and 9% have offered incentives for office attendance.
“Among these, office attendance mandates are considered the most effective,” JLL said in the report. “[This suggests] more directive approaches can be impactful, though they must be balanced with employee preferences and expectations for flexibility.”
