Their absence isn’t completely surprising. A widespread return isn’t expected to begin until the late spring or early summer, according to business leaders and recent worker surveys. But the slow return could signal that a significant increase in employees returning to work will lag behind progress made on containing the pandemic.
Office employees started to head back to work through the summer and early fall in some parts of the country as lockdowns eased and the spread of Covid-19 slowed. An average of more than 27% of workforces were back at their desks by mid-October in the 10 large U.S. cities tracked by Kastle Systems, a security company that monitors access-card swipes in more than 2,500 office buildings.
That rate in those 10 cities was down to 23.8% of workers the first week of February, slightly down from the 24.2% the previous week, Kastle said.
The same barriers that have kept most people at home for nearly a year remain. Employers are hesitant to ask workers to come back because they can’t assure them they won’t get sick from returning.
Public health officials and epidemiologists have expressed concern over the spread of variant strains of Covid-19. “No one wants to go back to the office and then have to shut it down two weeks later,” said Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
The worker-return rate is crucial to the recovery of millions of small businesses and the welfare of cities that depend on vibrant downtowns packed with workers, shoppers and diners. The pandemic has been particularly devastating for restaurants and bars that rely on the office crowd.
In Massachusetts, 3,400 of the 16,000 pre-pandemic restaurants in the state hadn’t reopened at the start of this month. “Chances are most of them won’t,” said Bob Luz, chief executive of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. He said most of the pain is being felt in downtown Boston, which resembles a ghost town these days because most white-collar employees are continuing to work from home.
The return-to-office pace will likely increase in the coming months. About half of the respondents to a national survey released in January by the National Association for Business Economics said they planned to suspend their stay-at-home policies in the second half of this year. That is up from 22% in the group’s October survey.
Childcare and transportation remain big obstacles to returning to work. “Even though it’s getting safer to bring people back, our members haven’t settled on back-to-work policies, and a lot of it is due to the availability of school and childcare,” said JD Chesloff, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable.
The New York City and San Francisco areas, both heavily dependent on public transportation, have return-to-office rates of only 13.3% and 12.5% respectively, according to Kastle. The Dallas and Houston regions, where most workers drive to the office, are at the high end with return rates of 36.8% and 34.9%, according to Kastle.
In New York, securities traders and other workers at some financial firms whose jobs can’t be performed as efficiently at home are back in the office. LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE recently told the corporate staff of its Tiffany & Co. unit to return to the office two days a week beginning on March 1.
Because vaccines aren’t 100% effective, some businesses say they won’t call back workers until there is more-widespread testing. Testing programs are “going to have to be very broad based,” said Kathryn Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business organization. “Employees have to be convinced that they can ride the subway and get to work and get home without getting sick.”
Even after downtowns reopen, it isn’t clear how much of the workforce will return because working from home has proved successful for many businesses. Salesforce Inc., one of San Francisco’s largest office-space users, said last week that it is planning for most of its employees to work remotely part or full time after the pandemic.