It’s not back to pre-Covid levels, but more and more companies -- large and small -- are telling their employees they have to start working from the office again. It may not be five days a week and some workers are resisting the new measures but for anyone who said work from home was the new normal going forward it’s very much a changing workplace.
New research from Placer.ai, the firm that tracks foot traffic data in offices and retail stores, shows that in July there were more U.S. employees working from offices than at any time since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. The company said that most Fortune 100 employees are now subject to return-to-office mandates.
Analyzing foot traffic data from about 1,000 commercial office buildings around the country, Placer’s new report found that office visits in July of this year were up 10.7 percent compared to July 2024. Even though that represented a new high for the past five years, it was still down 21.8 percent compared to July 2019, several months before Covid caused massive shutdowns not just in the U.S. but around the world.
New York City, which has a large financial sector workforce, actually saw an increase in foot traffic this past July compared to 2019, a modest 1.3 percent gain. Miami was close, with its foot traffic only off a scant 0.1 percent. Placer said that Atlanta and Dallas also saw more in-office foot traffic than the national average compared to 2019 levels while San Francisco saw the greatest gains year-over-year, with 21.6 percent visit growth compared to 2024, which seems to be the impact of the booming AI field which is rapidly staffing up in the city.
Of course for certain industries, like retailing, working from home was never an option. Retailers may have cut back on their in-store workforces while online employees sometimes had the option of working from home, but the majority of the retail workforce was always showing up in person. Now, at least, those store employees are seeing more office workers shopping on their lunch hours and after work.