More workers returning to NYC offices than previously reported: study

Business

realty check

By Steve Cuozzo

There are lots more employees in Big Apple offices than the most often-cited “barometer” of attendance would have you believe.

The Partnership for New York City released a survey on Monday claiming that 58% of Manhattan office workers are at their desks on an average weekday.

That’s up from 52% in late January 2023 and 49% in September 2022.

The latest data are much higher than the Kastle Systems Back-to-Work Barometer’s, which most recently reported “metro” New York occupancy at 50.1% — and has usually cited even lower attendance in its weekly postings.

The Partnership further found that the “rate of return” to offices was 72% of pre-pandemic levels.

That means that offices were on average 72% occupied —  which is a different metric than the percentage of workers who go to the office.

Just about anyone who works in an office noticed a growing degree of remote-work absenteeism long before the 2020 lockdown.

In fact, prior to the pandemic, the Partnership explained, Manhattan offices were on average only 80% occupied on any given day — due to vacations, business travel and off-site meetings, among other reasons for absences.

“So the actual drop off in office attendance since 2019 is much smaller than has been previously assumed,” the Partnership said.

None of this should surprise anyone who counts hordes of comings and goings at such premier towers as One Vanderbilt, One Bryant Park, 1585 Broadway, 30 Hudson Yards or 787 Seventh Ave.

But none of those addresses is surveyed by Kastle, which only counts entry clicks at locations where it provides security services.

Most Kastle-covered buildings are a mix of Class A-minus and Class B locations. Kastle is not on hand at any but one of the city’s 11 largest commercial landlords — as we reported several times and which Kastle has never disputed.

Its  “barometer” includes no data from SL Green, Vornado, Related Companies, Boston Properties, Tishman Speyer and the like — which have higher attendance than smaller landlords do, because the big landlords have the lion’s share of real estate, financial and law firm tenants.

Those industries, the Partnership reported, have the highest average daily office attendance — respectively, 75, 65 and 65%.

The notion that vast numbers of workers now work entirely from home is a myth: the survey found that the figure is a mere 6%, down from 10% last January.

Companies as diverse as JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, law firm Proskauer and software giant Salesforce and have publicly or quietly warned their staff to spend more days in the office this fall — or else.

Yet, some media outlets continue to credulously cite Kastle as gospel.

The New York Times is the chief offender. But it was dismaying that an otherwise fine scoop in the Real Deal last week about the foreclosure on a six-story building on West 34th Street cited Kastle’s ridiculous claim of office occupancy at just 42.5%.

A Crain’s story about bosses cajoling workers back into offices  similarly relied on Kastle without challenge, although it cited the more recent 50.1% figure.

Now, the Partnership’s numbers are hardly infallible, either. T

hey’re based on a survey of “more than 140 major Manhattan office employers” between Aug.  23 and Sept. 15, although the Partnership won’t reveal the names.  

As a business-advocacy organization, it would rather express optimism.

But Partnership chief executive Kathryn Wylde has never ever sought to sugar-coat the city’s undeniably troubled economic state.

There’s no doubt that more flexible work patterns are here to stay.

Or that lots of obsolete older buildings are in trouble.

But it will be a long time before the dust settles enough to know what the future actually holds.