Office attendance hits new post-pandemic high in February

As more companies inch closer to a five-day, in-office workweek, some white-collar workers may feel like they’re back in the pre-pandemic workplace…

While we’re (thankfully) not there (yet), last month was the busiest February for office attendance since February 2019, according to a recent report from location analytics platform Placer.ai. Office visits in February were 31.9% below 2019 levels, an improvement from February 2025, when they were down 35.7%. The biggest February return-to-office push seemingly happened between 2022 and 2023 when attendance went from -65% to -44.6%.

“We continue to see gradual improvement in terms of return to office. This is obviously the best February that we’ve seen post-pandemic,” R.J. Hottovy, Placer.ai’s head of analytical research, told HR Brew. “That’s what we’re looking at for 2026. It’s this continued, gradual improvement as more people are in the office, and you see new industries like AI start to drive people back to the office.”

What else is going on? So far this year, office attendance appears to be inching closer to 2019 levels, but 2025 saw RTO momentum slow. Office attendance was 32.6% below 2019 in February 2024, but hit -35.7% in February 2025.

In early 2025, the US was one month into a new presidency, and there was a lot of economic uncertainty with tariff news and consumer spending, Hottovy said, so these macroeconomic factors could’ve contributed to the slight RTO trend reversal.

“Think back to last February, it was one of the crazier months that we’ve seen,” he said. “There’s a lot of things going on…and I think some of that bled over to the office space. There was so much uncertainty that maybe there were less people in the office at that point.”

For HR pros overseeing RTO mandates and in-office engagement strategies, Hottovy recommended offering employees as many office amenities as possible, because the companies that do tend to “outperform” the ones that don’t.

“That’s an important factor when staffing and keeping employees happy,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in the market and making employees comfortable on that front is a great way to keep employee morale up.”