Return-to-Office Follows New Seasonal Patterns

Return-to-office has made progress recently—including December, traditionally the weakest month—but the recent trends also hint that office visitation patterns will never again be like they were before the pandemic in terms of when workers come to the office. 

Namely, office visits will be concentrated more in the warm months, and in the middle of the workweek. With that in mind, according to a report by Placer.ai, office landlords can adjust their leasing and management strategies to adapt in 2026 and beyond.

In 2025, the RTO progress was real: nationally, office visits rose 5.6 percent year-over-year, with attendance at 31.7 percent of pre-pandemic (2019) levels, and at the highest point since then, Placer.ai outlined in its latest office attendance report. Yet office visits rose 9.1 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year.

The report posited that the U.S. office market will see continued, but slower, return to office in 2026, despite the various RTO mandates that management devises. Currently office visits may be at a post-pandemic high, but that doesn’t mean a return to pre-Covid attendance.

Office visits higher in warmer months

Part of the reason is that office visits are becoming more concentrated in late spring and summer, reflecting the psychological reality that commutes are more pleasant during that time of the year, with commuting at that time mitigating the downsides of that activity. Various studies show that people generally dislike commuting, and even that the effort put in morning commutes contributes to worker burnout and impaired daily job performance.

Placer.ai finds that seasonality has thus emerged in office visits. Since 2024, the first and fourth quarters of the year—that is, the coldest months—have underperformed, while the warmer second and third quarters have posted stronger attendance. This pattern became even more pronounced last year.

As office visitation trends seasonally, offices, downtown retailers and cities may need to plan for the kind of peaks and troughs that would entail, the report noted. Some strategies would involve adjusting hours and staffing levels, as well as local services, to adapt to the new reality. That would be in preference to relying on annual averages to set hours and staffing levels and the like.

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Landlords can formulate leasing strategies in light of office visitation trends. For example, the second and third quarters—with their stronger attendance rates—may be best suited to leasing initiatives. On the other hand, softer visitation periods in the first and fourth quarters might be better used for renovations and space repositioning, as well as efforts designed to draw workers.

Office visits shift toward midweek days

Another Placer.ai finding is that Tuesdays and Wednesdays consistently drive the highest office attendance. Once upon a time (pre-Covid), Monday was actually the busiest day of the workweek, with the rest of the week fairly steady until a modest drop on Friday.

That is no longer the case, according to the report. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are now the workweek anchor days, with Monday and Friday seeing more anemic office visits. Despite the effort and bluster that employers have put into RTO mandates in recent years, the new workweek pattern has remained stable over the last three years, with only minor fluctuations.

There are some regional variations, however. Markets with higher use of public transportation tend to see weaker Monday visits, while markets with driving alone as the dominant commuter trend tend to see stronger Mondays. 

With these new workweek realities in mind, employers can maximize space utilization and collaboration by designing hybrid policies around midweek anchor days, Placer.ai noted. They could, for instance, focus on such uses as meetings and other programming during the midweek days.

Site selection is also important. If companies prioritized proximity in leasing and development decisions, that could lead to a positive impact on RTO across the workweek. Visits from employees traveling less than 5 miles to work have increased steadily since 2019, illustrating the value of centrally located offices.

Public policy has a role to play as well, the report said. Monday office attendance is closely correlated with commute ease, suggesting that reliable and efficient transportation would be an important factor in early-week office recovery, provided municipalities can make that a reality.