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 fell further as the August slowdown deepened.

• Class A+ buildings nationally averaged 68.0% occupancy, down from 71.3% the prior week.
• The peak day across all Class A+ buildings nationwide was Tuesday, August 18, at 82.2%, down from 85.0% the previous Tuesday.
• The August slowdown continues to weigh more heavily on Class A+ buildings than on buildings of all types.

Peak Day

Tuesday remained the peak day for nearly every market, with Austin as the exception again.

• Tuesday, August 18, was the peak day nationwide, according to the Kastle 10-City Barometer, which reported an average occupancy of 62.1%, up from 61.3% the previous Tuesday.
• Nine out of ten cities reported their peak day as Tuesday.
• Austin’s peak day was Wednesday at 87.2%, the fourth time in the last six weeks.
• Austin remained the highest-occupancy city on the list, averaging 75.0% over the last 12 weeks.

Weekly Average

The national average held nearly steady, with gains in five cities offset by declines in the other five.

• The Kastle 10-City Back to Work Barometer reported a national average of 52.7%, down 0.1 point from the prior week’s 52.8%.
• Five cities posted increases: San Jose (+2.7 to 43.8%), Houston (+1.8 to 60.6%), Dallas (+1.5 to 62.2%), Chicago (+0.8 to 55.8%), and Austin (+0.4 to 74.0%).
• Five cities posted declines: New York City (-4.4 to 53.3%), Washington, D.C. (-2.1 to 45.6%), Los Angeles (-1.2 to 46.5%), Philadelphia (-0.6 to 39.5%), and San Francisco (-0.3 to 45.5%).
• New York City’s decline brought it to its lowest weekly average since the week after Easter in April.
• Washington, D.C.’s decline coincides with road closures and parking restrictions tied to the Freedom 250 Grand Prix.

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%.