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Occupancy Surpasses 50% for Second Consecutive Week
Office occupancy surpassed 50% again this week, rising one tenth of a point to 50.4%, according to Kastle’s 10-city Back to Work Barometer. The weekly average has not been this high since January of this year. Occupancy in Washington, DC and Philadelphia reached new pandemic highs, rising 0.1 points to 48% and 0.6 points to 43.3%, respectively. The highest day this week was Tuesday at 59.8%, which is the highest single day since the start of the pandemic. The low day was Friday at 33.3% occupancy.
These record highs suggest that the more than three-point jump in occupancy after Labor Day indicates an upward trend in workers returning to in-person work. This would match the pattern of the past three years, which also saw long-term upward shifts in occupancy over the latter half of September.
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.
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