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 Holds Steady
Peak day office occupancy was 63.3% on Tuesday last week, up half a point from the previous week. Chicago experienced the largest increase, rising 1.8 points to 72%. Only Washington, D.C. experienced a decrease greater than one full point, falling 2.5 points to 60.5% on Tuesday and peaking on Wednesday at 61.3%. The average low was on Friday at 34.5%, down three tenths of a point from the previous week.
Weekly average occupancy stayed the same as the previous week at 53.4%, according to the 10-city Back to Work Barometer. The 10 tracked cities were evenly split between increases and decreases, all less than one full point.
Last week, average occupancy among the Barometer’s Class A+ buildings was 75.8% and Class A+ peak day occupancy reached 93.2% 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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