Foot traffic is picking up in U.S. offices, but Mondays and Fridays may still seem like a ghost town.
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Office workers returning to the workplace rose nearly 5% in October compared to the same period last year, according to Placer.ai.
That increase in traffic is concentrated in the middle of the week, however.
Placer.ai’s index analyzes foot traffic at 1,300 office buildings in the U.S. While office visits in October were still more than 30% below October 2019, foot traffic continued to pick up this year.
“Even amid entrenched hybrid norms and ongoing pushback against in-person requirements, office visit numbers continue to trend steadily upwards,” the report says.
Major companies like Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Samsung this past year have called on their employees to report five days a week to the office, according to workplace software management firm Archie.
However, the rise in foot traffic may be more attributable to a growing number of hybrid work positions and a dwindling number of fully remote positions, according to a Nov. 13 workplace report by global employment firm Robert Half.
Analyzing job postings for 450 different positions, Robert Half researchers found the number of online job postings advertising hybrid positions increased by 1% and the number of fully remote positions decreased by 1% in the third quarter compared to Q3 2024.
In that same period, the number of fully in-office postings decreased by 1%.
The growth in office foot traffic comes as more employers report achieving their attendance goals. According to the CBRE occupier survey, 72% of 184 companies met their attendance goals, up from 61% in 2024, with employees in the office an average of 3.2 days per week.
Underlying this trend has also been an improving U.S. office market. Companies absorbed 16M SF in the third quarter, helping to push overall vacancies down 20 basis points to 18.8%, according to CBRE.
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