More New York City office workers are taking a page from students heading back to school, packing up for returns of their own.
Between Aug. 29 and Sept. 12, 49 percent of workers returned to their desks, according to a survey reported by the Commercial Observer. The report is based on 160 major Manhattan employers conducted by the Partnership for New York City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
That’s up by 38 percent from April’s numbers and is expected to surpass 50 percent by the end of the year as employers rally their employees back into the office.
Most workers, 42 percent, were coming into the office three days a week, ahead of 12 percent who returned four days a week and 8 percent who commuted just once a week.
Real estate had the greatest turnout across the industries surveyed in terms of office attendance, with about 82 percent of employees reporting to offices daily. Next were law firms at 63 percent and financial services at 61 percent.
The smaller the firm, the higher the attendance. Companies with more than 5,000 employees had a 44 percent return to the office. However, those with fewer than 500 employees had 54 percent of their workers return on an average weekly basis.
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Other parts of the city have started to see the benefits of the daily commute. On Sept. 14, 3.7 commuters rode the subway, the highest total since ridership nosedived over 90 percent in March 2020 and a 30 percent increase year over year.
When including subways, buses, commuter rails and Access-a-Ride, there were 5.6 million commuters. Still, prior to the pandemic, the subway system alone had 5 million commuters daily.
— Sasha Jones