Return-to-Office Gained New Momentum in First Half of 2026: Report

U.S. office attendance is on the rise, but the return-to-office trend remains a tale of two cities.

In the first half of 2026, office visits nationwide rose 6 percent year-over-year, and achieved the narrowest first-half gap from pre-pandemic levels thus far, data from foot-traffic tracker Placer.ai shows. The six-month period of foot traffic marked acceleration from the 1.9 percent annual uptick observed in the same period of 2025.

Office attendance is far from a full and even recovery, however. U.S. office visits remain 31.2 percent below 2019 levels, according to Placer’s August office market report. While Miami and New York are making strides toward baseline visitation levels, Denver and Chicago still have a long way to go. The hybrid workweek also appears here to stay –– for now. 

The report’s survey of 11 major U.S. markets revealed that office attendance diverges widely across geographies. Cubicles and corner offices are filling up in Miami, where attendance in the first half of the year was 11.5 percent below that of 2019.  First-half attendance in Denver, on the other hand, remained more than 40 percent below 2019 levels.

The “most improved” award for the period of January through June goes to West Coast hubs Los Angeles and San Francisco, with annual visitation upticks of 13 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively. The pair of cities achieved the report’s largest year-over-year gains.

Hybrid workweeks have made a lasting impact on U.S. corporate culture, but the model’s popularity is waning in some markets. The country’s highest shares of Friday office attendance belong to Miami and Dallas, where roughly one in seven weekday office visits fell on a Friday. In  Chicago, however, Fridays account for less than one out of every 10 office visits. This is the same city where personalized video platform Cameo announced last year a $10,000 raise for every new and existing employee that returns to its Fulton Market office four days per week.

Compared to the jam-packed office elevators of 2019, the foot traffic of today’s corporate towers still has a long way to go –– but so does 2026. With six months left to report, and the tally of companies mandating office attendance continuing to rise, the staying power of America’s hybrid work schedules is an open question.

Emily Davis can be reached at edavis@commercialobserver.com.