Interesting data on office utilization from Yardi Matrix and the Census Bureau. We can see that office utilization rates are not static or universal. They vary significantly from market to market.
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) provides detail about the percentage of the working population that primarily works from home. According to the most recent data available, the share of U.S. workers primarily working from home fell to 15.2% in 2022, down from 17.9% in 2021 but nearly three times higher than in 2019. Boulder, Colorado had the highest rate, with 32.0% primarily working from home. Austin (28.0%) was second, followed by San Francisco (27.0%), Raleigh (26.1%) and Washington, D.C. (25.4%). Austin may come as a surprise given its place atop Kastle’s metric, which reports office entry card swipes relative to pre-pandemic levels. The metro’s high levels of growth in office employment (up 32% since 2020) allow it to simultaneously have a large share of remote workers and a relatively strong recovery in office utilization.
The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey is an experimental dataset that began during the pandemic in an effort to quickly deploy data for emerging issues. The most recent survey was conducted from Jan. 9 through Feb. 5 of this year. While the survey provides results about households (not individuals) and only tracks the 15 largest cities, it offers another snapshot of remote work. Among the metros tracked, Washington, D.C. had the highest share of households (52.5%) where at least one member worked from home at least one day a week, with San Francisco (46.1%), Boston (43.2%), Seattle (38.%), and Atlanta (37.3%) rounding out the top five. Unsurprisingly, Riverside, California, a metro with a small portion of its labor force in office-using sectors, had the lowest share of households with someone working from home at lease one day a week (17.7%), according to the Pulse Survey. Detroit (23.6%, Miami (27.6%), and Houston (29.8%) were the only other metros in the dataset with fewer than 30% of households including someone working from home.
It will be interesting to watch these metrics over the next couple of years!
