New York and Miami recently flipped the script on the future of in-office work, according to a study by Placer.ai. But it’s not the end of the story — rather, it is the opening scene in a far more complicated drama. Cities dominated by the financial industry are actually returning to the office. Tech-driven cities are recalibrating at a new normal that involves more remote work. Finally, a large middle swath of metros is settling into hybrid routines that will likely never fully go back to the way things were in 2019.
The results showcase how industry mix shapes behavior on the ground. Finance sets the tone in both cities and has pushed hard for in-office norms. Placer.ai reports that New York is unique among major metros in that it already has more office visits by workers than it did in 2019 — up by 1.3 percent from before the pandemic. Miami is a close second, being down from 2019 by only about 0.1 percent.
The reason? Firmer policies among large financial institutions that prize in-person apprenticeship, compliance and deal cadence. That pressure certainly helped fill elevators this summer, yet it also created friction for talent that still values flexibility.
Companies that dial returns up too far invite turnover risk that shows up quickly in high-skilled labor markets. The evidence for that is no longer anecdotal. University of Pittsburgh researchers analyzing S&P 500 firms found that after return-to-office mandates, affected companies experienced abnormally high employee turnover and slower hiring, with especially pronounced exits among senior and high-performing employees. The school’s summary states that mandates did not improve firm performance or employee satisfaction. Those findings underscore why aggressive policies that play well in finance hubs can misfire in markets where labor has more leverage.
The relative momentum in New York and Miami also relates to cost and commute realities. Even in transit-rich regions, the daily trip remains a major deterrent for many workers — a point reinforced by research into transportation and worker well-being. Recent studies link longer commutes with lower reported well-being and higher stress, while acknowledging mixed findings by mode and context.
The strongest takeaway is simple enough for policy: Reduce the cost and friction of getting to the office if you want higher attendance.
Step back from New York and Miami — the two cities whose in-office days are up or at least nearly flat — and the spread is striking. Placer.ai’s data show nationwide office visits are still down 21.8 percent versus 2019, even after a 10.7 percent gain year-over-year. Atlanta and Dallas have tightened their gaps to 14.8 percent less than 2019 and 18.3 percent less — better than the national average — whereas Denver office visits remain roughly 40 percent below 2019.
San Francisco office visits are still 34 percent behind their 2019 levels, despite 22 percent year-over-year growth for July. These data points capture a national landscape where finance-forward metros are going back to the office, diversified markets are stabilizing in a hybrid equilibrium, and tech hubs are transforming more slowly.
That divergence matters for public finance and street-level vitality. Even as availability begins to ease nationally, vacancy in tech-centric cities remains elevated and foot traffic patterns skew toward peak collaboration days rather than five weekly uniform commutes. The report notes that San Francisco’s June 2025 office vacancy rate (28 percent), Seattle’s (27 percent) and Austin’s (28 percent) show that the recovery is uneven. National averages can mislead operators when tech is so much slower to go back and there is an oscillation between anchor days, remote days and surge days.
If July was the busiest in-office month since early 2020, it still left a structural gap that looks durable. The report emphasizes employee preferences that have barely budged since 2022, citing Gallup’s hybrid indicator and related survey data.
Sixty percent of remote-capable workers prefer hybrid and roughly one-third prefer fully remote, with fewer than one in 10 choosing full-time on-site. That preference has consequences: Sixty-four percent of remote workers say they would be extremely likely to look elsewhere if flexibility were revoked. Leaders can recognize the ceiling that such preferences place on daily attendance, or they can spend political capital chasing a 2019 target that no longer exists.
Commute economics also bite. The report synthesizes 2025 findings that employees point to commute cost as their largest barrier to more frequent office attendance, with estimates of weekly driving and parking outlays that can add thousands of dollars per year to household budgets. This is where city context shows up in the numbers: New York’s reinvigorated transit network eases reentry to Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Metros with weaker or costlier commutes face a steeper climb.
None of this is an argument against time in the office. But it is an argument against pretending that office time, by itself, fixes performance. The Pitt research team found no evidence that mandates lifted firm performance or employee satisfaction, linking strict return-to-office rules to higher attrition among senior and high-skilled people, plus longer times to fill roles. That is a talent tax, and it lands harder in markets where employees have more options.
What tends to work, across markets, looks more like magnet than mandate. Anchoring teams on specific in-office days aligned to project rhythms, designing spaces for collision and apprenticeship rather than rows of assigned seats, and lowering commute friction by subsidizing transit and parking are the practical levers that show up in stronger peak-day utilization. In Chicago, for instance, early 2025 peak-day office utilization above 70 percent coexisted with hybrid schedules and aggressive quality upgrades in the best submarkets — a reminder that space strategy and experience design, not edicts, drive meaningful occupancy.
New York and Miami prove that firm policies plus supportive urban infrastructure can deliver full or near-full office attendance. They do not prove that every city will, or should, follow the same path. The national baseline is improving, yet the clearest signal in 2025 is the divergence itself, from finance-centric hubs that have largely restored old patterns, to diversified metros that are stabilizing at hybrid levels, to tech centers that are rebuilding on a different foundation.
The costs of rigid mandates are real, from attrition among top performers to commute burdens that depress well-being, and leaders who ignore those costs will spend more time replacing people than building momentum. The better play is to design offices and policies that earn the commute, accept a lower but more intentional baseline, and measure outcomes on the days that matter most.
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., serves as the CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and authored the best-seller “Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.”
