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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Austin Hits Record-High Occupancy
Peak day office occupancy was 61.2% on Tuesday last week, down nine tenths of a point from the previous week. Most cities experienced decreased occupancy throughout the week, as summer winds down. In New York, for example, peak day occupancy fell 2.8 points on Tuesday to 54.3%, more than 16 points lower than the post-pandemic record high set in July. Austin, however, peaked on Wednesday at 81.7%, the highest single-day office occupancy in any tracked city since the pandemic. The average low was 34.3% on Friday.
Weekly average occupancy held steady at 52.4% last week, one tenth of a point higher than the previous week, according to the 10-city Back to Work Barometer. New York City experienced the largest drop, falling 2.5 points to 44.1%. Washington, D.C. and Austin experienced increases, rising 1.4 points to 49.3% and 1.2 points to 70%, respectively. This was Austin’s second consecutive post-pandemic record high, and the first time any tracked city has reached 70% weekly average occupancy since the pandemic.
Last week, Class A+ peak day occupancy fell 4.8 points to 78.4% last Tuesday. Weekly average occupancy among the Barometer’s Class A+ buildings was 65.5%, down 2.7 points from the previous week and the lowest weekly average of the year. 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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