Only 41% of NYC workers will be back in the office by the end of September, Manhattan employers said in a survey

New York City — Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

New York City employers aren't anticipating a full return to the office just yet.
A survey by the Partnership for New York City asked employers how many workers will return by the end of September.
They expect 41% of employees to return by the end of next month, lower than the 62% in a May survey.
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Manhattan employers expect 41% of employees will return to the office by the end of September, about 20 percentage points less than a previous estimate just three months ago.

This is based on a survey by the Partnership for New York City, as Bloomberg first reported. The August survey showed employers are expecting a smaller return by the end of next month than they previously thought. In a May survey, employers thought 62% of employees will return by the end of September. This 41% is similar to a March survey where employers said they expect 45% of employees by the end of September.

Based on the most recent survey, 76% of employees are projected to return by the end of January 2022.

Amazon is one large company that anticipated a return in the beginning of September but has since pushed back office reopening plans to January 2022. Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership For New York City, told WNYC in an interview earlier this month that this is a "big deal" because "Amazon is now the second largest employer in New York City with 19,000 people."

"I've spoken to a number of other companies-BlackRock, a major asset management firm; Accenture, a huge global consulting firm-all of their plans are being deferred," Wylde told WNYC's Sean Carlson. "And they're going back to masking policies for vaccinated people, which is, again, a real downer in terms of getting people back to the office. "

The Delta variant in particular has resulted in some employers having to rethink their return to office plans. The survey found "44% of employers have delayed their return-to-office plans because of the recent rise in COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant, 54% have not delayed their return-to-office plans."

Not only are companies pushing back office returns, but some companies are mandating vaccines. New York City recently became the first US city to require proof of at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine for indoor dining and other indoor activities. Most of the employers surveyed approved of this mandate, at 94%. The city is also requiring public school teachers be vaccinated.

According to the Partnership for New York City survey, 23% of Manhattan employees have returned to the office so far, which is higher than the 12% reported in May. Companies with at least 5,000 employees were seeing a big increase in this return from May to August. This percentage has increased by 17 percentage points to 25%.

Looking outside of just New York City workers, some US workers don't ever want to return, however. According to a recent PwC survey of 1,007 full-time and part-time employees, 22% want to be working remotely one day or not at all but 19% said they want to be fully remote.

Additionally, 41% of remote workers surveyed in both January and August said they want to be fully remote. This was higher than the 29% who said that in January.

Bhushan Sethi, the joint global leader of PwC's people and organization practice, told Insider that it wasn't surprising that these remote workers have said "'we want to have optionality, we have become comfortable with the lifestyle choice', and maybe they have an understanding employer who's also comfortable with them working remote."

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