Nearly 500K Manhattan Office Workers Expect To Return By Fall

NEW YORK CITY — Nearly half of the people who work in Manhattan offices are expected to return to their desks this fall after working remotely since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the findings of a study that were released last week.

The Partnership For New York City surveyed the city’s major employers beginning late last month to project how long the 1 million people who work in Manhattan office space will continue to do their jobs remotely.

While the majority of them will continue to work from home on at least a part-time basis, the group discovered that almost 500,000 of those workers plan to resume their office visits by Sept. 21 but that other aspects of their work life will not return to normal, the study found.

The study also found that 22 percent of companies will require full-time attendance from their employees once their offices reopen. A much larger percentage (66 percent) of companies will implement a hybrid model, which allows for both working from home and from the office while only 9 percent of companies will not force employees to return to their desks if they choose. The remainder of companies (4 percent) indicated an employee’s role with the company will help to determine where they will work.

The majority of participants in the study revolved around the insurance and finance industry (37 percent) while the rest of the respondents represented companies dealing in real estate (18 percent), law (9 percent), consulting (6 percent) and media (6 percent).

The companies who responded to the Partnership for New York study were mostly in Midtown Manhattan and split between Midtown East (34 percent) West (37 percent) and the Financial District (16 percent).

Of those companies that responded, only 24 percent currently offer or plan to offer employees at least one COVID-19 related benefit, the study indicated. The benefits include on-site coronavirus testing, paid time off for vaccination appointments or improvements that were made to the office to adjust to coronavirus restrictions or guidelines.

Business travel is expected to remain in sharp decline while the majority of employees who commute to Manhattan for work will rely on public transportation. As of last week, only about 10 percent of Manhattan offices have welcomed employees back to their desks, which is the same percentage of workers who had done so last October. Of the companies surveyed as part of the study, 14 percent of them do not yet know when workers are expected to begin coming back into the office from home.

Of those companies that have started to allow employees to return, companies with 500 or fewer workers have seen employees come back at a faster pace than that experienced by larger companies. The smaller companies have seen 20 percent of employees come back while only 8 percent of employees who work for firms with more than 1,000 employees have made their way back to the office, the study indicated.

Real estate companies have been the most aggressive in allowing employees to return from home, the study found as 51 percent of the city’s real estate agents have resumed working from their old office space. While the industry expected 87 percent of employees to return to the office by July, that percentage has since dropped to 82 percent, the study found.

The city’s technology industry expects that 51 percent of its workforce will return by the Sept. 21, which was an increase from the 49 percent tech leaders expected when a similar survey was conducted last fall. By comparison, 50 percent of employees who are part of the insurance and finance industries are expected to find their way back to their desks by September, which is down slightly from the 52 percent that were expected to come back by this summer.

After President Joe Biden indicated last week that all Americans will be eligible for the coronavirus vaccine by May 1, companies remain divided on whether they plan to force employees to be vaccinated. A total of 61 percent of companies indicated that they will not require employees to get the shot while 37 will actively encourage workers to do so. A total of 11 companies who participated in the survey will require employees returning to the office to be vaccinated when they return to work. About one-third of companies indicated that they have not yet determined their company policy about vaccinations.

As businesses plan to welcome employees back, many companies do not anticipate business travel to return to full capacity for some time. A total of 22 percent of companies indicated that business travel has resumed in some way while only 2 percent of respondents said that business travel never stopped despite ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.

Nearly 47 percent of companies anticipate that business travel will resume in the second half of 2021 while 21 percent of study participants said that employees will not begin traveling until next year. Only 6 percent of companies predict that business travel will return to pre-pandemic levels while over half of companies (57 percent) anticipate that business travel will be reduced by between 50-75 percent from the levels that existed before last March.