Many office owners have depended on tech companies of all sizes to take space. It's been a dependable bet, but that's likely to be changing according to a new report, The Tech Tenant, from Savills Research and Data Services.

The report notes that big tech firms have been carrying "strategic vacancy" space to enable growth. In most industries, this is a small percentage of empty space. But tech, at least the biggest firms, had been keeping between 30% and 40% strategic vacancy room though 2022 in anticipation of major headcount expansion in 2023.

As inflation kept high, venture capital firms and others pulled back from funding, many startups couldn't get the money to establish themselves, and leaps in generative artificial intelligence made clear that was an important market for all of them, the expansions didn't happen. Instead, there were layoffs: 1,064 companies laying off 165,269 people in 2022; 1,191 companies letting go of 263,180 employees in 2023; and so far in 2024, 219 companies bidding goodbye to 50,841 workers, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks tech layoffs.