As the economy slowly recovers, Manhattan will permanently see fewer office workers coming into the city, a survey completed early this month by the nonprofit Partnership for New York has found.
Among the survey’s findings:
- 66 percent of employers will maintain a hybrid workforce, mixing days in the office with days working at home;
- Only 22 percent of employers will require employees to be in the office every day;
- 9 percent of bosses will not require workers to ever come to the office;
- 4 percent of employers said the amount of time a worker spends in the office will depend on the worker’s role.
By September, only about 45 percent of Manhattan’s roughly one million pre-pandemic office workers will be making forays back to the Big Apple’s core, according to a consensus among respondents.
TREND FORECAST: In the world of vaccines, masks, social distancing… and working from home, commercial real estate values will continue to decline, especially in large cities. Along with falling rents, property values will decline, as will revenues from commuter-dependent businesses.
As we have fully detailed over the past year, in New York City, for example, there was an oversupply of commercial real estate before the COVID War began. Thus, many of the big developers, already deep in debt, will go bankrupt as occupancy rates continue to decline.