Hybrid work patterns reveal occupancy varies throughout the week with Tuesdays typically being the highest day of the week and Fridays being the lowest. The chart below tracks Tuesday occupancy over time in ten cities and provides a new dimension to the weekly Barometer report. The Peak Day Hybrid Index will now be published weekly, offering a wider aperture into the full picture of workplace occupancy.
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Occupancy Dips Following July 4th Holiday; Extreme Weather Hits Houston
The weekly average peak remained unchanged at 56% occupancy, this past week on Wednesday. Friday — the average low day — only reached 15.1%, compared to 33.5% the previous week. The July 5th post-holiday dip follows a similar trend as in previous years. Houston experienced an unusually low average low day on Monday at just 4.7% occupancy — less than half that of any other city. This was likely due to extreme weather and blackouts from Hurricane Beryl.
The weekly average occupancy was 41.6%, down over four points from the previous week, according to Kastle’s 10-city Back to Work Barometer. The drop was predominantly caused by a more than 30-point decrease in Houston due to the extreme weather.
Methodology
To provide some clarity on the issues facing American businesses, Kastle has been studying keycard, fob and KastlePresence app access data from the 2,600 buildings and 41,000 businesses we secure across 47 states. We’re analyzing the anonymized data to identify trends in how Americans are returning to the office.
We’re ready to continue helping companies navigate the ever-changing workplace landscape and adjust to the ‘new normal’ of office occupancy. Whether full-time hybrid or in-person, our commitment remains to helping American workers return safely to their office buildings. We have a comprehensive system in place that integrates technology and new safety protocols — both for the building and tenant spaces. We’re keeping a close eye on this data as part of our KastleSafeSpaces framework, which we designed to help office buildings throughout workplace transitions.
Kastle’s reach of buildings, businesses and cardholders secured generates millions of access events daily as users enter office complexes, and individual company workspaces. The Barometer weekly report summarizes access control data among our business partners in ten major metro areas, not a national statistical sample. Charted percentages reflect unique authorized user entries in each market relative to a pre-COVID baseline, averaged weekly.*
*On March 22, 2021, Kastle moved from daily to weekly data reporting to provide a more robust and comprehensive picture of office occupancy. We have also recalculated data back to the start of the time series for consistency. This has only a marginal impact on most cities and the national average.
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