Huge New York landlord says Fridays in the office are 'dead forever' — and Mondays are 'touch-and-go'

• The chairman of one of New York's biggest landlords says Friday in the office are "dead forever."
• Office visits in the US are about 60% of what they were in 2019, according to a report by Placer.ai.

It looks like we're never going back to the office full-time — at least not every day of the week.

One of New York's biggest private landlords, Vornado Realty Trust, is betting on whether hybrid work is here to stay. The firm's chairman, Steven Roth, recently told investors that office work on Fridays was likely "dead forever."

Even Mondays, he said, are "touch-and-go," The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Vornado is in the middle of a $1.2 billion overhaul of its Midtown office buildings — many of which are right next to Penn Station — in hopes of luring hybrid workers back to the office at least a few days a week, according to the Journal's report.

And Roth's observations align with the latest data on return-to-office trends.

A report from Placer.ai, a firm that tracks mobile-phone data from 800 sites across the US, found that those who came into the office opted to come in during the middle of the week.

People are slightly more likely to visit the office on Tuesdays, with workers coming in at 62% of pre-pandemic levels, according to Placer.ai. The report also found that occupancy levels on Wednesdays and Thursdays were near 60%.

However, office visits on Mondays and Fridays were just half of what they were in 2019, according to the report.

The current push toward hybrid work comes as some companies are doubling down on employees returning to the office.

In February, Amazon announced that it would require workers to come into the office at least three days a week starting May 1 — a mandate that Amazon workers have been fighting with a petition.

Meta announced that workers would be required to come into the office three days a week starting in September and has also stopped offering "remote work" on its job board.

Disney CEO Bob Iger told workers that they would need to return to the office four days a week starting in March and said that "nothing can replace" in-person work. Employees met Iger's mandate with a petition that garnered more than 2,000 signatures.

A 53-year-old administrator in Arizona even recently quit her six-figure job when she was asked to return to the office five days a week.

"Many workers continue to resist returning full-time to an office, and many employers are finding that their preferences and edicts only go so far," Kathryn Minshew, the CEO and cofounder of The Muse, a workplace platform that regularly conducts surveys on work trends, said.

Across the country, the data remains relatively consistent. According to Kastle Systems — which tracks when employees swipe their badges at office entrances — the average office occupancy across the country's ten major metro areas was just under 50% for the weeks beginning June 14 and June 21.

Offices are less than half full across the US

Source: Kastle Systems building swipe data from 2,600 buildings in 136 cities

Correction: June 28, 2023 — US workers are coming into the office on Tuesdays at 62% of pre-pandemic levels, according to Placer.ai, which tracks mobile phone data at 800 sites around the country. An earlier version of this story misstated the figure.