At a time when some major U.S. cities have yet to return to half their pre-pandemic office attendance, Tuesday is the new Monday as far as workers are concerned. Traffic analytics firm Placer.ai found that day leads all others in the work week for those coming back to the office some of the time.
Tuesday accounted for 24.3% of all U.S. office visits in the fourth quarter of 2022. It was followed by Wednesday at 23%, then Thursday at 20.9%. Monday accounted for just 18.8%, topping only Friday at 13% for people coming into the office.
Friday’s 13% in the fourth quarter of 2022 was even lower than its pre-pandemic showing of 17.3% in the fourth quarter of 2019.
“Even before the pandemic, fewer employees came into the office on Fridays than on other days of the week — and slightly more came in on Tuesdays,” writer Lila Margalit said in a Jan. 10 report from Placer.ai.
With security technology firm Kastle Systems similarly reporting that major cities reached a peak average of 49% of pre-pandemic office attendance in mid-October, hybrid work models are becoming more common in the workforce. That’s despite numerous declarations from major companies including Apple, Disney, Goldman Sachs and Starbucks that corporate workers need to be back in offices for most of the week.
And workers appear to be standing by their responses to a June 2022 Gallup poll showing 60% of respondents whose jobs can be done remotely prefer hybrid work arrangements, with part of the week spent working full days from home. Work day preference appears to be like other existing trends that were merely accelerated in the pandemic: Tuesday and Wednesday were the most popular days to come in before COVID-19, but not by quite as large a margin.