Tracking office occupancy rates across America

Occupancy Barometer weekly report

The Barometer’s weekly report summarizes access control data from our business partners in 10 major metro areas, not a national statistical sample. Charted percentages reflect the number of unique authorized user entries in each market relative to a pre-COVID-19 baseline, averaged weekly and updated every Tuesday.

Class A+ Occupancy

Class A+ occupancy rebounded for the week ending September 30.

• Class A+ buildings nationally averaged 77.5% occupancy, up 1.4 points from the prior week.  
• The peak day across all Class A+ buildings nationwide was Tuesday, September 29, at 95.5%, up 1.5 points from the previous Tuesday. 
• That peak day matched the 95.5% reported for the week ending September 16, the last time Class A+ buildings reached that level.

Peak Day

Tuesday was the national peak day, with three cities peaking a day later.

• Tuesday, September 29, was the peak day nationally for all building classes, according to the Kastle Occupancy Barometer, which reported an average of 65.5%, up slightly from the previous Tuesday. 
• Seven of the 10 cities reported Tuesday as their peak day, compared with eight the prior week. 
• The three cities that reported Wednesday as their peak day were Austin (83.6%), Los Angeles (54.5%), and Philadelphia (49.7%).
• The national Wednesday average was 64.5%, up 1.6 points from the previous Wednesday.

Weekly Average

The national average edged up as September closed strong.

• The Kastle Occupancy Barometer reported a national average occupancy of 55.4%, up 0.7 points from the prior week. 
• All 10 cities posted a September average above their 2024 through 2026 average, with the 10-city figure 2.9 points higher and New York City leading at 9.2 points. 
• Six cities reported gains, led by Austin (+3.2 to 67.9%) and New York City (+1.5 to 66.0%). San Francisco was unchanged, and three cities declined, led by San Jose. 

Barometer data science
The most reliable way to measure office return is to count people directly, and daily security card swipes provide the largest sample size for this. For several years, Kastle’s Barometer has tracked weekly office occupancy in ten major metro areas, using anonymized keycard, fob, and KastlePresence app data from over 300,000 Kastle users in those cities (out of 1.8 million Kastle users globally) across 3,400 buildings and 60,000+ businesses in 47 states.
For each cardholder, we count only their first building entry each day, avoiding overcounting from multiple swipes. These daily figures are averaged into a weekly percentage.
That percentage is compared against a pre-pandemic baseline: the average weekly first-swipe activity during a three-week window in February 2020, when office attendance was at its highest. This baseline represents 100%, reflecting normal peak occupancy rather than maximum capacity, which is why some weeks can register above 100%.