Hybrid work settles into a predictable rhythm: Which days see more workers at their desks?

If you are working from home a few days a week and going into the office on other days, you are part of a trend that has established itself as routine in many parts of the country: hybrid work. In turn, the trend is establishing new office visitation patterns with relatively steady foot traffic at about 60% of pre-pandemic levels in recent months.

Since January 2023, the national visit gap for office buildings has hovered at around 40% of 2019 levels, according to Placer.ai.

When workers do turn up at the office, it is usually not on a Monday or Friday, when office visits fall by around 47% — or about half what they were in 2019. Instead, offices are generally closer to being full on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when office visits are down only about 38% compared to 2019, or on Thursdays, when there are 40% fewer visits.

This hybrid routine “enables both workers and companies to forgo the five-day-a-week commute while reaping the benefit of some in-person work,” the report states.

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However, the impact is not the same in all parts of the country. East coast cities are likely to see more workers at their desks than those on the west coast. In Washington, DC monthly office visits fell on average just 30% in May 2023 compared to 2019, while they plummeted 58% in San Francisco — far more than other cities studied.

In the same period, office visits were down around 31.6% in New York and Miami, 39% in Boston and Denver, 44.5% in Atlanta and Houston, and 46% in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Whether this trend will hold is still unclear. “Depending on one’s point of view, more time at the office is either vital for creative collaboration and individual career advancement – or an unnecessary burden on employees struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance,” the report notes.