More New York workers return to office, but hybrid schedules remain

Something noticeable started happening around April at the Queens medical office where Raymond Kayume of East Northport is a chiropractor.

Patients’ schedules were becoming less flexible. The culprit: stricter return-to-office mandates. No longer could patients as easily squeeze in an appointment. Doing so had been a lot easier when so many people worked from home.

“They nitpick: ‘Oh, we can’t come at that time,’ ” said Kayume, 50, referring to patients. “They’re not as open.”

More than three years after the coronavirus pandemic led to unprecedented work-from-home policies, and more than two years after hybrid workplaces became the norm, the new normal is getting a little more normal, experts say. 

Still, the legacy of the pandemic continues to keep offices far below pre-pandemic averages, with just 60% of offices full on an average workday, compared with about 80% before March 2020, according to Kathy Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City business group. On average, office workers go in three days a week, with that plateauing this year.

On Long Island, quarterly leasing activity of office space — where employees work — in the second quarter of 2023 was 40% below the five-year quarterly average, according to a report from the firm CBRE, which said that leasing has slowed and supply has increased. 

Wylde predicted that starting in the fall more employers are going to be pushing for workers to be in the office four days a week, particularly once the summer vacation season segues into September. 

At least that’s the goal. It’s up in the air whether employees will embrace the change, said Wylde, who represents the city’s biggest employers. 

“At least employer expectations are moving to four, let me clarify,” she said. “We won’t know how effective they are until we get into the fall. … We’ve seen over the course of the pandemic that employers adjust to employee pushback.”

The extent to which employers mandate in-office attendance depends on the kind of work the organization does, and it's hard to generalize, said Richard Buery, CEO of the anti-poverty Robin Hood Foundation.

Workers at the Manhattan- and Brooklyn-based not-for-profit must be in the office at least twice a week, and one of those days must be a Tuesday, to facilitate group events such as all-hands meetings, Buery said. That policy, which covers Robin Hood’s 110 or so employees, came into effect about a year ago.

The only exception is during August, when the staff can work from anywhere.

Buery said he expects his organization’s hybrid policy to stay as-is, for now.

“Once people settle and organize their lives around a certain policy, it feels like it takes a pretty high bar to ask for more,” Buery said.

Pre-COVID commuting

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 315,000 Long Islanders commuted to jobs in New York City, according to the city’s planning department: 225,100 from Nassau and 89,300 from Suffolk. Most went to jobs in Manhattan.

About 22% of employed Long Islanders worked in the city, per the state Labor Department. Updated figures weren’t available, but Newsday reported earlier this year that while the Long Island Rail Road saw a 50% increase in ridership last year compared to 2021, it remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

Still, at Penn Station on Wednesday, Melanio J. Cuebas, 61, said he commutes to his job every weekday except Fridays, when he works from his Lindenhurst home. Speaking as passengers rushed by, he said he hadn’t seen as many people commuting back and forth since pre-pandemic. 

“This is something that I take to heart every day — this was not like this a year ago,” said Cuebas, who works in the apparel and warehouse business.

That said, the 52.5 million passengers the LIRR carried in 2022 is still far fewer than the 91.1 million it transported in 2019, the most in 70 years, Newsday reported. 

On an average day, ridership is 74% what it was on a comparable pre-pandemic day, according to the latest MTA data.

Buery, who was a deputy mayor in former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, noted that fewer people coming to work in person depresses the real estate market, which means less tax revenue for schools, social services and more, as well as secondary pressure on businesses that depend on workers going to work.

“It’s hard to see an end to the challenge of what happens to the MTA, what happens to real estate taxes, what happens to dry cleaning companies and restaurants when you don’t have the same kind of reliable, five-day-a-week commercial activity,” he said.

Even as fewer workers are in the office five days a week, there are other ways to generate economic activity, said Buery, who co-chaired a state and city panel last year tasked with advising how to revitalize New York. Among the options: rethinking downtowns as nexuses not just of work but of live and play; residential developments in places that had been almost all office space; and renewed pedestrian activity in those corridors. 

Still, while office attendance policies “may adjust modestly,” Buery said, “there’s no reason to think it’s gonna go back to the way things were … I don’t think Pandora’s going back in that particular 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday box.”

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

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