Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
U.S. office attendance reached its highest level since the pandemic in 2025, rising 5.6% year over year, but the pace of recovery is clearly moderating.Â
Visits remain roughly 32% below pre-COVID norms, and the latest data suggests the return to office is moving from rapid rebound to gradual, incremental growth heading into 2026, according to a new Placer.ai report.Â
Employers are expected to continue tightening in-office expectations, but the data indicates mandates alone are no longer the primary driver of behavior. Instead, convenience, timing, and proximity are increasingly shaping when—and whether—workers show up.
Mandates Meet Their Limits
2025 marked a peak moment for return-to-office policies, with major employers reinstating full-time or near-full-time attendance requirements. The year also revealed the constraints of enforcement. Pushback, uneven compliance, and cultural resistance led many organizations to quietly expand in-office expectations rather than impose hard rules.
As a result, attention has moved away from policy and toward the structural factors that influence attendance, including commute friction, weather, and workplace location.
A More Seasonal Office Economy Emerges
Office visitation has become markedly more seasonal. Unlike the relatively stable year-round patterns seen before 2020, attendance now concentrates heavily in late spring and summer.
Since 2024, the second and third quarters have consistently outperformed, while the first and fourth quarters have softened further. Winter weather disruptions, extended holiday travel, and the normalization of remote work during travel periods have pulled visits out of colder months and into warmer ones.
This has implications well beyond office floors. Downtown retailers, building operators, and city agencies are increasingly forced to plan around predictable peaks and troughs rather than annual averages, adjusting staffing, hours, and programming accordingly.
Leasing and Investment Follow the Calendar
Seasonality is also reshaping commercial real estate strategy. Stronger attendance in Q2 and Q3 is making those quarters more favorable for leasing activity, while slower periods are increasingly used for renovations, repositioning, and activation efforts designed to draw workers back.
For landlords and developers, quarterly planning is becoming more relevant than annual forecasting as utilization patterns grow less uniform.
Midweek Becomes the New Core
The modern workweek has settled into a stable hybrid rhythm. Tuesdays and Wednesdays continue to generate the highest office attendance, while Mondays and Fridays lag behind.
This midweek clustering has held steady for several years, reflecting employees’ preference to concentrate collaboration, meetings, and in-person work into fewer, higher-value days while preserving flexibility at the edges of the week.
Employers seeking to maximize space utilization are increasingly designing hybrid policies, programming, and meeting schedules around these midweek anchor days.
Commute Friction Shapes Early-Week Attendance
Monday attendance, in particular, appears closely tied to commute conditions. Markets where workers rely more heavily on driving tend to see stronger early-week office presence, while cities with greater dependence on public transportation often experience weaker Mondays.
New York City stands apart. Despite high transit usage, its extensive and reliable system supports relatively strong Monday attendance, underscoring that commute friction—not transit itself—is the key variable.
The contrast highlights the role transportation quality plays in office recovery, especially at the start of the week.
Proximity Gains Value
Commute distance is emerging as another critical factor. Since 2019, office visits from workers traveling less than five miles have steadily increased, while visits from those commuting 10 to 25 miles have declined.
While this reflects visit frequency rather than residential relocation, the pattern suggests shorter commutes are associated with more consistent in-person attendance. Over time, this dynamic may influence leasing decisions, residential demand near job centers, and the geographic distribution of office development.
Convenience, Not Compulsion, Drives the Next Phase
The data points to a clear conclusion: office attendance is rising, but the drivers have changed. Growth is increasingly shaped by ease, timing, and perceived value rather than top-down mandates.
For cities, improving transit reliability, last-mile connectivity, and housing access near employment hubs may prove as influential as any return-to-office campaign.Â
For employers, reducing friction and designing offices around how people actually work now appears central to sustaining attendance gains.
