Large employers in San Francisco are calling their employees back to the office.
The city had a 1.6 percent year-over-year rise in office visits last month, part of a glacial recovery from the exodus of large technology employers during the pandemic, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing a report from Placer.ai, which tracks visits.
Only Miami posted stronger gains in office attendance during November, at 1.7 percent.
The uptick likely stems in part from Salesforce and other big tech employers requiring workers to return to the office, Placer.ai said.
More artificial intelligence companies and the venture capital firms behind them are leasing offices.
The city’s temperate climate likely contributed to the gains. In comparison, Denver had one of its snowiest Novembers on record, Placer.ai said, while New York battled transportation issues.
Nationwide, year-over-year office visits declined 6.5 percent, while worker visits fell 6.1 percent in Los Angeles, according to the report.
San Francisco’s November office uptick was nominal, analysts say, but adds to a rebound that has seen the city’s office visits reach 57 percent of prepandemic levels, up from 47 percent last January.
No major U.S. city suffered a bigger blow from remote work than San Francisco, according to Ethan Chernofsky, senior vice president of marketing for Placer.ai, which tracks visits by aggregating location data from mobile devices.
Office vacancy jumped to more than 33 percent by the end of the last fiscal year, exceeding levels seen during the dot-com bust and the 2007-2009 recession, according to the city. CBRE pegged the city’s vacancy at 36.9 percent.
The rising vacancy has shown signs of leveling off, according to the Business Journal.
If this year’s office attendance gains continue into next year, foot traffic could spread to shops and restaurants. Chernofsky said it wouldn’t surprise him if office visits reached 70 percent of prepandemic levels next year.
“It’s starting to crawl back,” Chernofsky said of overall activity in Downtown. “There’s upside in San Francisco again.”
Alexander Quinn, director of economic research in Northern California for JLL, said employers are enforcing back-to-office mandates, while pulling back on remote hiring.
In San Francisco, remote job postings are down 16 percent year-over-year, according to JLL.
— Dana Bartholomew
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