New York’s return-to-office numbers are surging and corporate giants are pouring billions into new towers, but the rest of America’s office desks are still empty.
New York City has just reached a symbolic milestone. In July 2025, office visits in Manhattan rose 1.3% above the same month in 2019, according to data from location analytics firm Placer.ai.
It’s the first time a major U.S. city has surpassed pre-pandemic office traffic. But far from disproving the work-from-home shift, the data actually shows how unusual New York has become.
Is New York The Exception, Not The Rule?
While The New York Post recently suggested that the office comeback narrative has been underreported, the numbers from Placer.ai tell a more nuanced — and more national — story.
Across the country, office foot traffic is still down 25.6% from pre-pandemic levels. Los Angeles is off by 40%, San Francisco by 34.6%, and Chicago by 34.2%. Even Washington, D.C., a historically government-driven town, lags by 30.9%. Only Miami came close to New York, with a difference of -0.1%.
As journalist Alec MacGillis wrote on X, it’s “really striking to what degree NY has become an outlier in recovering from the remote-work shift, especially given that it is the city that was hit first and hardest by the pandemic that prompted the shift.”