With the COVID pandemic mostly behind them, workers across Texas are streaming back to the office – but not in the California business hubs of Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
Nearly two-thirds of office workers in such Lone Star cities as Austin had returned to their desks last month, but in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, only 40 percent did, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing a report from JLL.
By early next year, 65 percent of office workers should be back at their desks for a majority of the week, according to a new forecast from commercial property firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
At the end of September, 47 percent of office workers had returned nationwide, JLL analysts say in a new report.
Texas led the nation in office occupancy, with Austin worker re-entry at 60.5 percent, Houston at 57.6 percent and Dallas at 53.8 percent. It was followed by Los Angeles, at 45 percent of returned office workers.
“Some of the things that have made us attractive as a state and a region from a business perspective are drivers of that,” said Blake Shipley, JLL managing director. “In Dallas … office buildings feel substantially occupied.”
The Bay Area lagged at 40.4 percent for Silicon Valley and 39.2 percent for San Francisco, where technology companies have downsized or eliminated offices during a shift to remote work.
But in Texas, major employers have been mandating more in-office work since Labor Day and are expected to continue this push into early next year, while most allow employees to also work from home.
“Hybrid is here to say,” said JLL Managing Director Cribb Altman. “One thing COVID has taught us is people can be productive from home.
“But there is still a purpose of the office from a collaborative standpoint.”
The office vacuum is so acute in the Bay Area that in San Francisco, where a quarter of its office space sits empty, the city ponders its blow to tax revenue and Mayor London Breed talks of luring life science companies to fill the gap.
Some forecast an office vacancy rate of up to 50 percent in some parts of the city, as Downtown San Francisco faces 1,300 expiring office leases by 2024.
Across the Bay in Oakland, where the Downtown office vacancy just hit 32 percent, business leaders have called upon city officials to clean up the city center and work to revive traffic.
— Dana Bartholomew
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San Francisco
Downtown SF faces 1,300 expiring office leases by 2024