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 lagged the broader market’s rebound this week.

• National average occupancy in Class A+ buildings fell one point to 67.0%, compared with 68.0% the week before.
• The peak day, Tuesday, August 25, also declined, reaching 81.3%, compared with 82.2% the previous Tuesday.
• Class A+ buildings are not rebounding from the summer lull as fast as buildings of all other classes.

Peak Day

Tuesday remained the peak day nationally, with Los Angeles again the exception.

• Tuesday, August 25, was the peak day nationally, with the average for all building classes rising for the second straight week to 62.6%, up 0.5 points from 62.1% the previous Tuesday.
• Nine of the ten cities reported Tuesday as their peak day, with Los Angeles as the exception, reporting Wednesday at 53.5%, its third Wednesday peak in the last four weeks.

Weekly Average

The national average continued its late-summer climb, with more cities gaining than declining.

• The Kastle 10-City Back to Work Barometer reported a national average of 52.9%, up 0.2 points from the prior week’s 52.7%, suggesting the end of summer vacations and the start of the school year are moving the needle, as in past summers just before Labor Day.
• Five cities posted increases, led by San Jose (+1.9 to 45.7%), followed by Chicago (+1.1 to 56.9%), New York City (+0.5 to 53.8%), Washington, D.C. (+0.2 to 45.8%), and Houston (+0.1 to 60.7%).
• Philadelphia was unchanged at 39.5%, while four cities posted small declines: Los Angeles (-0.4 to 46.1%), Dallas (-0.4 to 61.8%), San Francisco (-0.3 to 45.2%), and Austin (-0.3 to 73.7%).
• Houston and San Francisco each ended the summer lull above their respective averages since January 2024.

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%.