The office industry showed signs of trouble prior to the pandemic as workers fled major cities due to increasing housing costs.
This led the world’s largest tech companies, such as Amazon and Google, to split their headquarters across various locations to have better access to talent in other areas.
However, remote working capabilities now allow people to earn high salaries from practically anywhere, whether that be cities or rural areas.
Workers have also expressed that their workspace does not meet their everyday needs. In fact, Leesman, a firm that measures employee experiences, found that 40% of 719,000 respondents felt their office did not enable productivity.
When the pandemic hit and millions were forced to work from home, many professionals had a realization of what they needed out of the workspace.
Some decided that working from home was their preferable choice, while others realized that having a flexible office closer to their homes would help them achieve more within their personal and professional lives.
But what does this mean for the office market as a whole? While vacancy rates have skyrocketed over the last several months, companies like Google and Facebook have recently signed new leases.
However, these large firms typically plan hiring strategies years in advance. Knowing this, it is safe to assume that overall demand for traditional offices will slowly decline.
Of course, this does not mean that the office is dead. Instead, it will likely be more distributed across various neighborhoods and cities to allow employees to avoid long commutes, while still having a physical workspace to come into.
