Occupancy rate barometer: Tracking trends across America

About the Kastle Occupancy Barometer report

Office occupancy is a key indicator of how commercial real estate is performing, offering insight into how businesses are using their space. In many markets, Class A+ buildings have continued to attract tenants and command higher rents, even as the broader office sector adjusts to modern ways of working. The Kastle Occupancy Barometer adds to this picture with aggregated, real-world occupancy data that tracks how buildings are used day to day.

How the data is tracked

The Kastle Occupancy Barometer tracks our anonymized access control system data from over 300,000 Kastle users in 10 major cities to identify trends in how Americans are returning to the office and utilizing commercial spaces. The data can assist with return-to-office planning and understanding the commercial real estate market.

Counting daily access control entries is the most reliable way to measure office return, with the largest sample size of its kind. Occupancy is measured against a pre-pandemic baseline established in early 2020, just before COVID-19 disrupted office attendance. Data is updated weekly, with monthly charts available to track trends.

Kastle Occupancy Barometer weekly report

These headlines summarize 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 and updated weekly.

Class A+ occupancy

Class A+ occupancy held steady.

• National average occupancy in Class A+ buildings was 77.1%, down one-tenth of a point from 77.2% the previous week, despite a noticeable drop in occupancy on Tuesday, November 3.
• The peak day across Class A+ buildings was Wednesday, November 4, at 91.1%, down from 94.8% on the previous Tuesday.

Peak day

Wednesday was the peak day nationally.

• Wednesday, November 4, was the peak day nationally for all building classes, according to the Kastle Occupancy Barometer, at 65.3%, down 1.4 points from 66.7% the previous Tuesday.
• Wednesday was the peak day in eight of the ten cities, with San Francisco and Houston the two exceptions.
• Tuesday saw a significant drop in occupancy in eight of the ten cities compared with their average Tuesday occupancy for the prior two weeks, led by Chicago (-4.83 points), San Francisco (-4.52), Houston (-4.06), and Austin (-4.03).
• Running against the national tide, San Jose reported a 1.34-point increase over its average Tuesday occupancy, as did Los Angeles, at 0.25 points.

Weekly average

The national average held nearly constant.

• The Kastle Occupancy Barometer reported a national average occupancy of 56.4%, down only 0.1 point from 56.5% the previous week.
• The three California cities reported increases, led by San Jose (+0.8 to 47.3%), followed by Los Angeles (+0.4 to 47.8%) and San Francisco (+0.1 to 48.2%). Houston was also up 0.5 points to 59.9%, and Dallas was unchanged at 65.0%.
• Five cities reported declines, led by Austin (-1.9 to 74.6%), followed by Washington, D.C. (-0.9 to 51.1%), New York City (-0.6 to 71.6%), Chicago (-0.2 to 56.1%), and Philadelphia (-0.2 to 41.9%).

Behind the 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, the Kastle Occupancy Barometer has tracked weekly office occupancy in 10 major metro areas, using anonymized keycard, fob, and mobile access credential 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 person, we count only their first building entry each day, avoiding overcounting from multiple swipes. Using our occupancy rate formula, we average these daily figures 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% and reflects normal peak occupancy rather than maximum capacity, which is why some weeks can register above 100%.