Office usage has peaked in North America
Globally half of office desks were utilized for less than one hour per day, while meeting rooms are a big pain point.
While people in Asia are spending more time in the office, workers in the US and UK are not, according to a new report from XY Sense, a company that uses sensors to track office occupancy in more than 40,000 workspaces.
While office space utilization — the share of used spaces within an office out of all available space — in the Asia-Pacific region grew 10 percentage points last quarter to 41%, that rate stayed at 28% in North America and declined in the UK. The so-called return to the office has been much slower in the US than abroad, partly because of factors like longer commute times, larger homes, and cultural individualism here.
Office utilization in North America is about half what it was pre-pandemic, according to XY Sense.
When people do go into the office, meeting spaces are much more in demand. On average, time spent using collaborative spaces like conference rooms (4 hours a day) was 54% higher than individual desks (2.6 hours), and lack of communal space has become a big pain point for companies. Meanwhile XY Sense found that half of office desks were utilized for less than one hour per day, while 30% were never used at all.
XY Sense data tracks with a number of other indicators showing office indicators and remote work are pretty stable in the US.
Flex Index, which surveys employers about their office requirements, found that the structured hybrid model, where employees are required to come into the office a certain share of the time or on specific days, has remained dominant. Currently about 38% of US companies opt for it. Some 33% require full time in office while 29% are either fully remote or leave the choice of whether to come in to employees. That still leaves a lot of variation in how much office space is actually necessary.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that the portion of Americans who worked from home some of the time jumped up last year to 35%. WFH Research’s ongoing survey of Americans has found that working from home has been pretty stable since last year, with about 30% of paid full days worked from home.
All of this has meant that office needs are only a portion of what they once were. As such, office real estate continues to struggle as vacancy rates approach 20%.
