A post-Labor Day spike in workers returning to the office in DC

Labor Day marked the unofficial end of summer, and it may have been a turning point in efforts to get more office workers back on site.

Falls Church, Virginia-based building security company Kastle Systems, which has been tracking employee traffic at office buildings across the country since the onset of the pandemic based on ID card and key fob entries, said the share of office workers at D.C.-area buildings during the week of Sept. 4 rose to 56.3% — the biggest post-Labor Day jump since the pandemic began.

“It tells me people are increasingly coming back to the office. Ever increasingly, executives are saying I need my people in the office at least some of the time,” said Mark Ein, owner of Kastle Systems, and a D.C. venture capitalist and entrepreneur.

The D.C. metro still trails some big metro areas for office worker on-site occupancy. It hit 63% in New York City the week of Sept. 4; 67% in Dallas; and 73% in Austin. D.C. is still ahead of others, like San Francisco, San Jose and Philadelphia.

Gauging the share of D.C.’s office workers working either on-site or remotely is skewed by the large presence of federal government workers, many of whom have had flexible work schedules since long before the pandemic set in.

“Even though we don’t track government buildings, the government’s behavior has a multiplier effect in Washington of all of the other people who interact with the government and their need and desire to be in the office,:” Ein said.

Ein, who heads investment and venture capital firms, and whose businesses include an ownership stake in the Washington Commanders, was among early business leaders advocating for a return to the office after the first waves of the pandemic had passed. He was also among the first to predict the adoption of hybrid scheduling, an arrangement that he, as a business leader, said he is comfortable with.

“People are together at least three days a week, but there is some flexibility other days of the week,” said Ein, who called that arrangement “the new normal.”

To that end, Kastle Systems’ Back to Work Barometer has been tracking office worker on-site attendance on a daily basis, as well as its weekly average. In the D.C. area, that has ranged from 53.2% on Tuesdays to 27.4% on Fridays.