A dramatic shift in the balance between hybrid work and in-office work has occurred among Fortune 100 companies in a year.
“We recently hit a major tipping point: 5-day office requirements have supplanted hybrid as the dominant policy for Fortune 100 employees,” JLL senior manager U.S. office research, Jacob Rowden, declared in a LinkedIn post. The average weekly requirement for in-office work rose from 3.1 days to 3.9 days over the 12 months from July 2024 to July 2025.
In July 2024, 11% of the nation’s largest companies required workers to be fully in the office. By July 2025, the number had increased to 54%.
A similar dynamic applies to hybrid work. While 83% of companies accepted hybrid work in July 2024, by July 2025, that share had fallen by half to just 41%. The share of fully remote policies remained stable at 1%.
Rowden noted that the largest employers in government, finance and technology have all shifted to five-day work weeks. They include the federal government, JPMorgan Chase, Amazon and Walmart. Some state governments are adopting similar policies.
“This has considerable implications for the prospects of securing hybrid or remote employment in these industries,” he added, noting that other companies – especially peers in the same industry -- are likely to follow the leaders. JLL also predicted that a softening labor market would shift more leverage to employers and dismissed the idea that hybrid is here to stay.
Nevertheless, Rowden said employers are assessing whether such strict policies will increase the risk of attrition –" a function of the current attendance policies of all its collective competitors for talent.
“Momentum clearly points towards continued incremental increases in attendance requirements, and catalysts that would shift momentum towards more flexibility seem rare or completely absent in the current environment,” he stated.
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