NYC Workers Have Gone Back to the Office

The COVID pandemic has failed to kill New York City office culture, as some predicted. A new analysis from location analytics platform Placer.ai, which tracks foot traffic at 1,000 commercial buildings across the country, finds office visits in NYC have rebounded and, in a first for any major US city tracked by the company, are now higher than pre-pandemic levels, per Axios. Office foot traffic was 1.3% higher last month than in July 2019, according to the company. Placer.ai attributes this in part to the city's high share of finance-related businesses, which have been leading the charge in getting employees back into offices.

Nationwide, July was "the single busiest in-office month since COVID," according to Placer.ai, with visits down 21.8% relative to July 2019, and up more than 10% compared to July 2024. Office visits in Miami, which also has a booming financial sector, are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels as well, just 0.1% lower this July than in 2019. And change can be quick. As of April, visits to NYC office buildings remained 5.5% below the rate of five years prior, per the New York Post. Other companies say the data show only part of the picture. Kastle, which tracks security access data, says office occupancy in NYC on Tuesdays (the highest occupied day of the week) in July was 66%, while weekly occupancy rates remained under 55%.