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Post-Pandemic Offices Are Becoming Ghost Towns on Mondays Now, Too

Most offices have been relatively empty on Fridays for a while, and as my colleague Emily Gallagher recently reported, and the continued adoption of hybrid work has only made it worse. But the post-pandemic office has added another emptier day of the week, Monday, according to a recent report by Density, a space analytics firm.

Density’s analysis of its customers showed that Mondays in the return-to-office era only see an average utilization rate of 16 percent. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday have historically garnered the highest utilization rates, but even those mid-week days are hovering around 20 to 24 percent utilization. Mondays have experienced a 58 percent drop in average utilization since 2020, and Fridays have seen a 63 percent drop.

Density’s analysis is based on 188 complete floor plans among 27 major customers, so it’s a small sample size. Still, the data may reflect what many occupiers and office landlords have seen. In the hybrid work era, people clearly want to work remotely on Mondays and Fridays. If many offices remain this empty on those Mondays and Fridays, it presents a challenge to landlords and occupiers moving forward. Offering perks to get people into the office on emptier days may work. But shutting the place down on those days to save on operational costs may also become an option if utilization rates remain low.

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