Most Manhattan workers staying home
Report: Just 8 percent showing up in person five days a week
New York City’s post-pandemic recovery has slowed as just a small fraction of Manhattan’s office workers have returned to in-person work, according to a survey published Monday.
The findings — compiled by the Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s largest employers — estimated 62 percent of Manhattan’s office employees worked remotely during a typical weekday in late April. And just 8 percent — one in 12 — showed up to work in-person five days per week, the report shows.
“The longer people worked remotely, the longer they wanted to continue to work remotely,” said Kathy Wylde, the CEO of the Partnership for New York City. “It’s called inertia. The longer people are doing one thing, the harder it is to get them to change.”
It’s a far more sluggish return to in-person work than the organization projected before the omicron variant of COVID -19 first swept through the city. A survey conducted in late October found that nearly half of Manhattan’s office workers expected to be in the office by the end of January.
Predictions of a return to normalcy have proved inaccurate for more than a year. A March 2021 survey found that employers expected about half of the borough’s office workers to be back in person by last September.
About 78 percent of the city’s major employers expect a combination of remote and inperson work is here to stay, the survey found.
The survey also found many New Yorkers continue to cite crime and harassment as a reason to avoid the office. Nearly two-thirds of the companies surveyed said improving public safety and addressing the city’s homelessness crisis would help bring workers back.
“What we found about this survey is people are concerned about crime and homelessness and mental health issues, but they’re also waiting for their colleagues to come back. They’re waiting for Manhattan to come back to what it was in 2019,” said Wylde. “People are seeing a much stronger police presence in the subway, and I think that’s providing relief and restoring a sense of security, but at the same time they’re seeing a lot of mentally ill homeless people on the streets. People are shooting up drugs in Midtown.”
“It’s a bit of a Catch-22,” Wylde added. “The fewer commuters, the fewer people on the streets going to do their business, the more problems are going to arise.” Wylde said she is confident people will come back to work in Manhattan over the next two years, but the slow return threatens to hammer the city’s economy till then.
New York City’s unemployment rate was 6.5 percent in March, nearly double the national average of 3.6 percent.
The dim outlook is also bad news for the MTA, which faces a deficit of $500 million come 2025 if more people do not return to trains and buses.