As the federal government has called employees back to the office five days a week, New York, the largest U.S. city, is not ready to jump on that bandwagon yet.
New York will continue to allow eligible city employees to work remotely for up to two days per week after reaching a one-year extension with DC 37, the city’s largest municipal public employee union. The two sides first agreed to a remote work pilot program in May 2023 before it began in June that year. The extension will run through May 31, 2026. DC 37 represents 150,000 members, according to its website.
“As we continue to settle into our post-pandemic reality, we must ensure that we continue to make city employment an attractive and accessible option for the working-class New Yorkers who serve and run this city every day,” said Mayor Eric Adams.
New York’s move comes as the White House, along with cities such as Philadelphia and states such as Texas, have asked their employees to return to the workplace five days a week, joining major employers such as Amazon and JPMorgan Chase that have also ordered full-time return policies.
Still, despite the growing push to bring employees back, the hybrid work trend of employees working just some days a week remains in vogue among employers seeking to balance employee preferences, industry professionals have said.
A case in point, nationwide office visits in February remained 36.3% lower than the level in pre-pandemic February 2019, according to a study released this month by Placer.ai, which tracks anonymous and aggregated mobile device location data. While New York and Miami continue to lead other cities in the office recovery, their February visits remained about 20% short of their respective levels in 2019, according to Placer.ai data.