Manhattan offices are getting fuller — but nowhere close to pre-pandemic

A “slow but steady” return to office jobs continues in Manhattan, with 49% of workers showing up in person on an average weekday, up from 38% in April, according to the latest pandemic survey by a business group representing New York City’s biggest employers.

And the share of office workers who are fully remote dropped to 16% this month, down from 28% in April, according to the survey by the group, the Partnership for New York City.

By January, office attendance on the average weekday is projected to be at 54%, the partnership said in a report, released Thursday.

“We will be getting back to something that feels like a healthy office culture — and that’ll mean more interaction, more activity — more retail activity, more activity in the streets of the city — and we’re already seeing that,” Kathryn Wylde, the partnership’s president and chief executive, said in an interview. “Today, as you’re going around the city, it feels like we’re well on our way to pre-pandemic conditions.”

Still, all isn’t pre-pandemic, when offices were about 80% full (when factoring in client visits, business travel and other reasons for being out), she said.

Only 9% of workers are back in person full-time. Employers are having the most difficulty convincing Long Islanders and other suburbanites who live far away to come back in person, a problem exacerbated by mass transit featuring higher rates of crime than before.

“We certainly do hear from employers that folks with the longest commute are the hardest to bring back to the office. So for suburban commuters, that’s an issue,” Wylde said. “They’ve appreciated having a couple extra hours in their day and conditions of the transit system have not been the best, so that’s an issue but it’s one that we know how to fix — and hopefully will.”

Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams, said that public safety is the administration’s "top priority," and there is an "omnipresence of police" in the subways. This year in the subways, the cops have made more than 4,600 arrests, done 16,000 ejections and issued more than 61,000 summonses.

On Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office announced that subway ridership reached 3.61 million on Sept. 13, the second-highest number since the pandemic began; the Long Island Rail Road carried 200,200 riders, or 69% of pre-pandemic ridership. For the LIRR, that’s the second-highest ridership of the pandemic, and second to the record set Sept. 7:  204,000.

According to data from the Falls Church, Virginia-based Kastle Systems, which tracks swipes into offices, the New York City metro area had occupancy of 38% on Sept. 7. That's below the company's top-10-city average of 43.4%. The highest of the big cities tracked by Kastle is the Austin, Texas area, with 57.2% on Sept. 7; the lowest is the San Jose, California area with 34%.

The steady rise in workers returning to the office comes more than 2½ years after the coronavirus pandemic came to the United States, catalyzing shutdowns and lockdowns globally that emptied workplaces and accelerated remote work as governments sought to contain the outbreak.

In December 2021, the virus' omicron surge led three-quarters of surveyed Manhattan office employers to delay return-to-office plans, the partnership reported in January.

Before the pandemic, about 315,000 Long Islanders commuted to city jobs, according to the city's planning department: 225,100 from Nassau and 89,300 from Suffolk. Most went to jobs in Manhattan. And about 22% of employed Long Islanders worked in the city, per the state Labor Department. Updated figures weren’t available.

Wylde — whose latest survey, of 160 major Manhattan office employers, was done between Aug. 29 and Sept. 12 — isn’t pessimistic about New York City’s future.

“There’s a change that was accelerated by the experience of the pandemic, but it was already happening through e-commerce, the technology revolution where people were able to work from anywhere, communicate, meet by Zoom,” she said. “So these are all changes that have happened more quickly but were inevitable, and one thing New York City has proven over many decades is that we are a very resilient city. We’re good at change, and we will adapt. I have no doubt.”

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.