The Return to the Office Gets Put on Hold
Covid-19’s fall resurgence has also meant a resurgence in working from home — for the lucky minority that is able to do it.
A familiar scene.
Photographer: OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images
The slow return to the office of summer and early fall appears to be over, for now. Office occupancy in the 10 big metropolitan areas tracked by Kastle Systems,1 which manages security access for commercial real estate owners, has been declining since late October and hit 24.78% last week. This did amount to a slight bounce-back from Thanksgiving week, but the trend is clearly downward.
Last week’s jobs report contained similar news. The share of employed Americans working at home because of the pandemic rose from 21.2% in October to 21.8% in November, the first monthly increase since government survey-takers started asking about this in May. (This figure does not include those already working at home before the pandemic — who make up somewhere between 5.7% and 14.6% of the workforce, depending how you measure it.)2