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 continued its typical August slide.

• Class A+ buildings nationally averaged 74.4% occupancy, down 2.6 points from the prior week’s 77.0%.
• This is consistent with the August lull Kastle has measured in recent summers.
• The peak day across all Class A+ buildings nationwide was Tuesday, August 4, at 91.4%, down slightly from 92.7% the previous week.
• That peak day remains robust, currently running 27 points higher than the peak day for all building types.

Peak Day

A Tuesday peak held across most markets, with Los Angeles and Austin peaking a day later.

• Tuesday, August 4, was the peak day nationally for all building classes, according to the Kastle 10-City Barometer, which reported an average of 64.4%.
• Eight of the 10 cities reported Tuesday as the peak day, continuing a summer 2026 pattern in which Tuesday and Wednesday share the top of the charts.
• The two cities that reported Wednesday as their peak were Los Angeles at 54.1% and Austin at a remarkable 85.9%.
• A year ago, the peak day in the first week of August 2025 was Tuesday, August 5, at 60.9%, which was 3.5 points below this week’s 64.4%.

Weekly Average

The national average eased as the August lull continued.

• The Kastle 10-City Back to Work Barometer reported a national average occupancy of 54.4%, down 1.2 points from the prior week’s 55.6%.
• Even in the midst of summer vacation season, 54.4% is only 2.5 points below the highest weekly average reported since January 2024, which was 56.9% nationally in March of this year.
• Houston was the only city reporting an increase, up 0.4 points to 59.1%, and Dallas was unchanged at 62.1%.
• The eight cities reporting declines were led by New York, down 2.5 points to 63.3%, followed by San Francisco (-2.0 to 45.8%), Chicago (-1.9 to 55.2%), Washington D.C. (-1.9 to 49.7%), Austin (-1.2 to 74.8%), Philadelphia (-1.1 to 40.5%), Los Angeles (-1.0 to 47.6%), and San Jose (-0.9 to 45.7%).

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%.