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Office Occupancy Returns to Pre-Thanksgiving Levels
Office occupancy rose nearly 10 points to 49.0%, according to Kastle’s 10-city Back to Work Barometer. All ten cities saw occupancy rise as workers returned to the office after the Thanksgiving holiday. Seven of ten cities experienced double-digit increases, with Austin and Chicago jumping over twelve points to 58.6% and 52.5% respectively. Houston continues to report the highest occupancy rate at 59.8%.
Averages reported this week are adjusted for the federal holidays to more accurately reflect prevailing trends in return to office.**
Methodology
To provide some clarity on the issues facing American businesses, Kastle has been studying keycard, fob and KastlePresence app access data from the 2,600 buildings and 41,000 businesses we secure across 47 states. We’re analyzing the anonymized data to identify trends in how Americans are returning to the office.
We’re ready to continue helping companies navigate the ever-changing workplace landscape and adjust to the ‘new normal’ of office occupancy. Whether full-time hybrid or in-person, our commitment remains to helping American workers return safely to their office buildings. We have a comprehensive system in place that integrates technology and new safety protocols — both for the building and tenant spaces. We’re keeping a close eye on this data as part of our KastleSafeSpaces framework, which we designed to help office buildings throughout workplace transitions.
Kastle’s reach of buildings, businesses and cardholders secured generates millions of access events daily as users enter office complexes, and individual company workspaces. The Barometer weekly report summarizes access control data among our business partners in ten major metro areas, not a national statistical sample. Charted percentages reflect unique authorized user entries in each market relative to a pre-COVID baseline, averaged weekly.*
*On March 22, 2021, Kastle moved from daily to weekly data reporting to provide a more robust and comprehensive picture of office occupancy. We have also recalculated data back to the start of the time series for consistency. This has only a marginal impact on most cities and the national average.
**Data reports for Thursday, November 23, 2023 and Friday, November 24, 2023 are using an average from previous weeks. Rather than omit the holidays from the weekly average, the substitution more accurately reflects the prevailing trends in return to office.
Click here for more information about the Barometer methodology and FAQ