Study Showcases Latest Office Occupancy Trends

Keeping track of the average occupancy rate in offices can go a long way to accurately assessing utility needs, adjusting building service provider (BSC) contracts with end-users, and gaining latitude for appropriate staffing sizes for front-line cleaning teams. As shutdowns caused by the pandemic took full effect, keeping a firm grip on the above challenges became far more difficult as end-users struggled to assess their own cleaning needs. As vaccines became more widely available and the overall threat of COVID-19 diminished, many companies slowly crawled back to normal and returned to the office — albeit nowhere near their pre-pandemic levels.

However, an industry study conducted by Kastle Systems shows that the average office occupancy rate in 10 major US cities exceeded 50 percent (50.4) in early March 2020 for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic 10 cities participating in the study were Chicago, New York City, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Texas, San Francisco, Austin and San Jose.

Key findings from the study include:

• According to research from the week of Jan. 19-25, two Texas cities — Austin and Houston — lead the way in office occupancy at 67.7 percent and 60.3 percent, respectively
• On the other hand, the bottom two from the same sample were San Jose (41.1 percent) and Philadelphia (42.7 percent).
• Across the week, the highest average occupancy rate across the 10 cities was 58.6 percent, and the lowest was 34.9 percent
• Compared to the week of January 12-18, every city except Dallas and Houston saw higher occupancy rates overall for January 19-25

While many companies have started to take the hybrid approach of having employees come into the office two or three times a week, other large companies like Tesla have fully reinstated full-time office requirements in the wake of declining COVID-19 cases and overall threat reduced. Occupancy on a case-by-case basis requires cleaning professionals to maintain an ongoing dialogue with facility managers or end-users to ensure cleaning needs are being met and not requiring month-to-month changes.

With office occupancy rising again, cleaning-related complaints from residents, staff and managers are bound to increase again. To get a good laugh or just dive into some relatable grievances, check out our latest grievance study Building cleaning decisions.