US corporate workers lag behind Europe and Asia in return to office: report

White-collar workers in the US, who are accustomed to working from home during the pandemic, are reportedly dragging their feet returning to their jobs, compared to their energetic counterparts in Europe and Asia.

U.S. office occupancy rates hover between 40% and 60% of their pre-pandemic levels — with fluctuations by month and individual cities, according to real estate services firm JLL, published by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

According to JLL, US office return figures are minuscule compared to Asia’s post-pandemic office occupancy rate, which ranges from 80% to 110%.

An occupancy rate above 100% indicates that more people are working in parts of Asia than before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.

The data shows that occupancy rates in Europe and the Middle East are also higher than those in the US, ranging from 70% to 90%.

The magazine report notes that several international cities, including Paris, Tokyo and Seoul, saw office occupancy rates exceed 75% between 2021 and 2022.

“The brunt of this has been in the US,” Phil Ryan, director of JLL City of the Future, told the paper.

According to the magazine, several factors have contributed to the U.S. lagging behind in returning to office.

Experts pointed to the extremely tight job market in the US, where the country’s unemployment rate is just 3.4%, as well as the trend among US workers to have bigger homes and longer commutes to the office.

The red-hot job market has forced many companies, especially in the technology sector, to hire remote workers to fill their ranks.

According to Moovit Inc., New York workers spend an average of 58 minutes commuting one way, while office workers in Paris average 52 minutes and Hong Kong workers average 44 minutes.

A growing number of US companies are putting pressure on their employees to return to the office more often.

Disney and Amazon have recently faced pushback from corporate employees after increasing the number of days per week workers must be on site.

However, the hybrid office schedules raised concerns from the city about a potential shortfall in tax revenue.

Manhattan workers are spending $12.4 billion a year less in the city than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published last month by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom’s WFH research group and published by Bloomberg.

New York Comptroller Brad Lander warned that this trend could deplete much-needed revenue to maintain a high quality of service.