Since April 2024, Nick Villa, associate director and economist at Moody's, has been looking at the connection between office visits and vacancy rates. Using data from Placer.ai, which uses cell phone data to analyze foot traffic down to a property level, and Moody's data as well, Villa didn't find a strong correlation between visits and occupancy.

Now, Villa returns to additional Placer.ai data and reexamines the relationships. The news hasn't improved.

The new Placer.ai data said that national employee office visits were 27.8% lower than in July 2019 and 16.5% higher than in July 2023. There are some weaknesses to the analysis with only 11 metros included and a time series that is only five years old. At the top, Miami saw a 90.6% recovery from its July 2019 building visits. New York was at 89.6%. Atlanta was third at 76.7% recovery, Dallas was fourth at 76.9% and Washington, D.C. was at 73.9%.