JP Morgan to Order Staff to Return to Offices Five Days a Week

J.P. Morgan Chase has decided long-distance relationships don’t work and is ordering its employees to return to the office five days a week.

The bank, with about 300,000 employees worldwide, is expected to announce the end of hybrid and remote work in the coming weeks, sources told Bloomberg, a predictable outcome considering J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s outspoken criticism of the policy.

But it won’t be a huge change to the company since about 60 percent of the bank’s global staff is already in the office five days a week, according to a source.

J.P. Morgan joins a growing number of companies recently requiring their employees to return to their offices five days a week after the pandemic upended in-person work. Major companies that recently announced an end of remote-work policies include Amazon, AT&T and Sweetgreen.

Those companies are following in the footsteps of Goldman Sachs, which got rid of the pandemic-requirement-turned-cultural-staple of hybrid work in 2023. Many other companies remain nimble in their approach to office attendance.

J.P. Morgan officials declined to comment.

The increase in more regular white-collar work comes as office leasing in Manhattan saw figures closer to pre-pandemic levels.

Office leasing in New York City has primarily been led by financial services, law firms and accounting consultancy firms while tech has been less bullish on signing for physical space in the last two years, Ben Brown, managing partner and head of Americas real estate at Brookfield Asset Management, said at a recent Commercial Observer event.

Brown admitted that tech tenants may have a different view of whether office space is necessary, but he expects there to be greater diversity among tenants in the near future.

Colliers also noted in a recent report that more tenants occupied than vacated offices in the third quarter of 2024 on a national level, marked by a decline in sublease availability for the fifth consecutive quarter, while Avison Young noted a 14 percent increase in average renewal square footage, as CO previously reported.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.