In-person work takes big leap in the Bay Area

The era of baking bread on a weekday morning or wearing pajama bottoms below an ironed shirt for video office meetings appears to be on the wane in the Bay Area Lockdowns during the early stages of the COVID pandemic wrought seismic lasting changes to the way people work with full-time at-home employment leading to widely adopted hybrid mixes of remote and in-office work that remain popular among a great number of workers and employers But a new poll suggests remote work is fading and even hybrid models are losing ground This year nearly two-thirds of employed respondents say they worked fully in-person compared to fewer than half last year according to the poll by Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley a regional think tank It s a surprising end noted Russell Hancock Joint Venture s president and CEO We have seen multiple employers say The contest s up we need you back in the office I m hearing that preponderance of all in the intensive areas of our market like AI and the startup context This has become a hard valley as opposed to the soft valley when everyone was enjoying their perks having their work-life balance BAY AREA POLL After pandemic gloom are Bay Area residents feeling more optimistic about the region The poll results are based on interviews conducted Aug to Aug with adults in Santa Clara Alameda Contra Costa San Mateo and San Francisco counties from August - with a margin of error of approximately Google Meta and Apple which maintain hybrid work environments did not respond to questions about their future in-person plans In September Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cited the pursuit of innovation collaboration and connection in ending the company s three-days-in the-office hybrid model and ordering employees including those at the company s Bay Area offices back in five days a week Related Articles Forget stock options Specific Bay Area employers are handing out down payments Bay Area California post small job gains for August as hiring stalls Walmart will shut East Bay store and eliminate scores of jobs California s Great America chops jobs as uncertainty looms million immigrants are gone from the US labor force under Trump preliminary facts shows Remote and hybrid work schedules have played a villain s role in the struggles of Bay Area downtowns also hollowed out by society s shift from in-person to online shopping Without these workers coming downtown the organization sectors and the retail sectors are really going to struggle disclosed Abby Raisz vice-president of research at the Bay Area Council which represents Bay Area businesses Pedestrians walk near Salesforce Tower in San Francisco Calif on July Badge-in content from building-security giant Kastle indicates office occupancy has sluggishly bounced back from what it was before COVID with San Francisco at about occupancy Dai Sugano Bay Area News Group At Berliner Cohen law offices in downtown San Jose the approximately attorneys and staff were called back to the office full time in mid- RELATED Retirement in the Bay Area Poll finds numerous seniors face bare-bones budgets mounting debts It was to rebuild our sense of neighborhood and practices revealed firm partner Christine Long who wasn t among those polled Still while polls and other measurements produce varied results office-based work clearly remains below pre-pandemic levels Bay Area office vacancy rates are among the highest in the U S at compared to nationwide according to researcher CommercialCafe Demand for office space will presumably not return to pre-pandemic levels stated Santa Clara County Assessor Greg Monteverde since working from home seems to be at selected level something that is going to be fairly permanent A drone view of an office building in downtown Oakland Calif on Monday May Office-based work clearly remains below pre-pandemic levels Bay Area office vacancy rates are among the highest in the U S at compared to nationwide according to researcher CommercialCafe Jane Tyska Bay Area News Group Badge-in material from building-security giant Kastle indicates South Bay office occupancy has sluggishly bounced back to barely over half what it was before COVID while the San Francisco region falls even shorter at around A survey by Stanford University the Hoover Institution and Instituto Tecnol gico Aut nomo de M xico uncovered days worked fully at home in the Bay Area dropped only this year to BAY AREA POLL High cost of living forces residents to delay anatomical procedures having kids Rod Timoteo owner of Myst rieux Hair Salon works on his client Jerome Delara's haircut at San Pedro Square in San Jose Calif on Thursday Sept It's been really tough revealed Timoteo who opened the hair salon in downtown San Jose in From a m to p m it's almost a ghost town Ray Chavez Bay Area News Group It s been really tough revealed Rod Timoteo who opened Myst reiux hair salon in downtown San Jose in and wasn t among the Bay Area poll respondents From a m to p m it s almost a ghost town However selected businesses want their employees to come into the office more Timoteo revealed and with new enterprises opening nearby we re now starting to get more traffic Meanwhile the number of visitors coming to downtown San Jose for all purposes rose this year to million compared to million during March of before the pandemic according to cell phone information analyzed by market-intelligence company Placer ai Downtown Oakland saw just a increase this year to million visitors while downtown San Francisco received a bump The San Jose region s faster bounce-back may be attributable in part to an easier commute to work than in San Francisco and the East Bay and tech campuses with free parking making in-office work more appealing the Bay Area Council s Saisz commented Work colleagues Maria Palomares center and Jeanette Martinez right walk to lunch in downtown on Thursday Oct in San Jose Calif The number of visitors coming to downtown San Jose for all purposes rose this year to million compared to million during March of before the pandemic Aric Crabb Bay Area News Group In downtown San Jose one of Berliner Cohen s lawyers Maria Palomares who wasn t among those polled has resumed her pre-pandemic habit of buying lunch nearby most of every day We used to go to San Pedro Square all the time she mentioned Employers remain divided on which employment models work best Offering options to work from home can help recruitment and worker retention and employee-monitoring technologies can promote productivity declared Anis Uzzaman CEO of San Jose venture capital firm Pegasus Tech Ventures Pegasus Tech Ventures CEO Anis Uzzaman works in his office on Tuesday Aug in San Jose Calif Offering options to work from home can help recruitment and worker retention and employee-monitoring technologies can promote productivity declared Uzzaman Dai Sugano Bay Area News Group At other companies leaders and managers revealed communication among workers teams and managers improves when all are together on site Uzzaman announced With layoffs prevalent in tech employers have more leverage to mandate in-office work Uzzaman commented Since the start of the pandemic Juanita Alvarez a paralegal business trainee and budding entrepreneur has worked from home in San Jose for Amazon in Sunnyvale then commuted to Cupertino three days a week on a hybrid schedule for Apple then worked a fully remote job for a San Francisco cybersecurity firm after moving to Oakland Let s say that I ve got a minimal job opportunities and two of them are remote and one s hybrid then I just take the remote role noted Alvarez a poll respondent Juanita Alvarez of Oakland works remotely at her home on Thursday Sept Alvarez started working from home back in Alvarez has hedged her bets She located herself in West Oakland to cut rental costs and also to get close to BART Jose Carlos Fajardo Bay Area News Group Still Alvarez has hedged her bets She located herself in West Oakland to cut rental costs and also to get close to BART If I find myself in a position where I have to go back to the office for five days a week I would rather be in a place where it s not going to be too hard on me Alvarez explained Downtowns haven t been the only casualty of remote and hybrid work transit ridership plunged especially on BART and Caltrain But over the past year Bay Area transit use has generally trended upward while burgeoning post-pandemic highway congestion has stabilized reported Sebastian Petty a senior adviser for transportation guidelines at residents guidelines research nonprofit SPUR Related Articles Forget stock options Certain Bay Area employers are handing out down payments Bay Area California post small job gains for August as hiring stalls Walmart will shut East Bay store and eliminate scores of jobs California s Great America chops jobs as uncertainty looms million immigrants are gone from the US labor force under Trump preliminary evidence shows With traffic back transit has become more appealing especially for those with time-consuming commutes and costly parking fees Petty stated Petty noted that local transit services are facing funding troubles that could mean amenity cuts and worse traffic More congestion would provide an even greater deterrent for customer-support engineer Hamilton Wu of Pleasanton to commute His employer in San Jose officially wants him in the office two to three times a week but he manages to keep it to once every couple weeks explained Wu a poll respondent I don t mind being there explained Wu I just mind having to commute