Mondays make a comeback for Bay Area office workers

In the continued evolution of return-to-work policies, employers appear to have the upper hand, according to data from Avison Young’s new Office Busyness Index. 

That particularly applies to the Bay Area’s tech-heavy markets on the first day of the workweek.

The San Francisco Peninsula and Silicon Valley markets logged 50 percent more in-office activity on Mondays this June than they did a year ago, according to Avison Young, a bigger increase than any other market in the country. In-office activity in San Francisco is also up 20 percent on Mondays compared to last year, according to the new index, which uses Placer.ai mobile phone data combined with Avison Young’s own internal research to track office visits in 4,000 office buildings in 48 markets across the U.S.

“Companies are calling their employees back,” said Dina Gouveia, the brokerage’s head researcher for the Western Region. “It’s like, ‘Enough with this you choose which days you come in.’” 

The move to the office has an oversized impact in the Bay Area, in large part because tech companies quickly adopted remote work during the pandemic. 

San Francisco’s Monday numbers speak to another trend Gouveia is seeing in the index: suburban markets that cut down on commute time and allow workers to drive rather than use public transit have recovered more quickly than urban markets.

“Commute has been an incredible deterrent to coming back,” she said, pointing out that commute distances have dropped in markets across the country since the pandemic, but especially in urban cores.

Even offices along the Van Ness Corridor, which is closer to more of San Francisco’s western residential neighborhoods, are busier than the core Downtown San Francisco office markets. In the Mission, which is also near residential neighborhoods on the south side of the city and has seen an added bump from AI companies like OpenAI and Retool in the area, busyness numbers are actually higher now than in 2019, the only market in the city with that distinction. 

“AI is really gaining traction,” Gouveia said. “Are they going to absorb 18 million square feet of vacant space? No. But it helps move the needle in the right direction.” 

Overall in the Bay, Tuesdays and Thursdays remain the most popular in-office days at about 60 percent of 2019 attendance. But Mondays have now nearly caught up with Wednesdays, at about 52 percent of 2019 attendance for the latter and 48 percent for the former, according to Avison Young data. 

Monday attendance has gone up 40 percent across the Bay Area year over year, the most of any work day and higher than the national 25 percent increase. Tuesdays are up 18 percent in the region, compared to 11 percent nationwide. 

Wednesdays have pretty much held steady over the last year, both locally and nationally. Thursday attendance is down 8 percent in the Bay, and almost 10 percent nationwide, which may mean that some workers who are still on a three-day schedule have started front-loading their weeks with in-office days.

Fridays remain the most popular day to work from home. In-office attendance in the Bay Area on Fridays is at 42 percent of 2019 levels, down slightly from 2023. Nationwide, office attendance on Fridays is at just over 48 percent of 2019 levels, a drop of nearly 15 percent year over year.

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