The office market continues to search for a new post-pandemic normal as hybrid work becomes deeply entrenched and remote-driven practices like micro-shifting — where employees break their workday into shorter on-site and at-home segments to optimize flexibility — reshape workplace patterns. Even with more employers implementing full-time office attendance mandates, office visits remain heavily concentrated in the middle of the week, indicating many employees are still working remotely on Fridays, according to Placer.ai’s nationwide Office Building Index for October.
From January through October 2025, only 12.4% of weekday office visits occurred on Fridays. By comparison, Tuesdays accounted for 24.3%, Wednesdays 23.7%, and Thursdays 21.8% of all visits. The pattern varies by market: workers in Miami and Dallas are most likely to show up at the end of the week, while employees in Boston and Chicago are the least likely. Still, no city analyzed recorded more than 15% of weekly office visits on Fridays. Even New York City, despite strong overall return-to-office momentum, lagged the national baseline for Friday attendance.
In 2025, a growing number of major employers — including Toyota, JPMorgan Chase, The Washington Post, Paramount/Skydance, and the federal government — implemented five-day in-office mandates, signaling continued pressure on workplace attendance. But ingrained hybrid habits remain difficult to unwind, the report said.
“October 2025’s Office Index data shows that the RTO story is still far from settled,” Placer.ai noted. “Hybrid habits remain deeply ingrained, yet steady progress suggests a gradual rebalancing between flexibility and presence — one that will continue to shape the workplace landscape in the months ahead.”
Office visits remain far below pre-pandemic levels, but activity did show modest improvement. Office traffic grew 4.7% year over year in October, with Miami and New York continuing to lead the nation’s post-pandemic recovery. San Francisco logged the largest year-over-year rebound, outpacing Chicago and recording the fastest YoY visit growth of any analyzed city. Dallas and Houston also outperformed the nationwide YoY benchmark of -30.8%, with Houston only slightly trailing at -34.9%.
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