- About 60% of occupiers plan to add staff within two years and 5% expect cuts, while 78% of active requirements aim to grow or hold their footprint, per Newmark.
- Attendance looks settled: nearly 75% of occupiers call it steady, employees average 3.2 office days a week, and space per worker has leveled off near 120 square feet.
- Roughly 42% of pre-pandemic leases haven’t expired and most firms are unsure how AI will change space needs, so right-sizing and AI-driven demand are the next variables.
Early results from Newmark’s Occupier Benchmark Survey show about 60% of office tenants plan to add staff within two years, while only 5% foresee cuts.
Responses are still coming in, so the figures are preliminary.
Get Smarter about what matters in CRE
Stay ahead of trends in commercial real estate with CRE Daily – the free newsletter delivering everything you need to start your day in just 5-minutes
Growth Plans Hold
Newmark’s own tenant demand data agree: 78% of live requirements want to grow or stay put, against 15% planning to shrink.
Hiring has stayed subdued since 2024. Professional and business services added jobs that cover recent declines in information and finance.
AI is the wild card: 80% of occupiers can’t yet say how it will change staffing or space needs, and most keep it out of long-term plans.
Footprints Keep Shifting
Tech tenants are expanding, and their share of big-block deals is the largest since 2022. Finance, insurance and real estate firms are shrinking, usually to land in better buildings with tighter floorplates.
Companies are concentrating people at headquarters while trimming regional offices. On new leases, 35% added shared space and 11% added desks.
Resizing has more to run: about 42% of pre-pandemic leases are still in force, so many tenants haven’t yet had a chance to adjust for hybrid.
Hybrid Has Rules Now
Over 80% of respondents run hybrid, and structured schedules lead. Three-quarters enforce attendance for everyone or for certain teams.
Among hybrid firms, 67% say the policy helps them recruit and retain, versus 30% of fully in-office firms. Badge data from Kastle Systems show midweek peaks around 70% of pre-pandemic.
Attendance Has Settled
Close to three-quarters call attendance steady, and about 15% are working to raise it. Workers average 3.2 days in the office.
Kastle’s weekly average topped out at 59.2% in December 2025, essentially flat since. Space per worker has flattened near 120 sq ft, roughly 8% under the early-2020 level.
AI Is Early
Around 40% of corporate real estate groups remain in early planning or testing of AI, and under 15% are scaling. Accuracy, trust and data security are the main worries.
Lease abstraction and occupancy analytics come first, since they run on data teams already hold.
Why It Matters
If attendance and headcount are steady, demand turns on quality and relocation more than net growth. CoStar data CRE Daily covered showed office leasing averaging 105M SF over four quarters, about 10M SF under the 2015-19 pace.
That fits tenants who are planning to hold or grow while swapping space for better buildings.
What’s Next
Newmark says each new response sharpens the benchmarks, and respondents get access to peer data. Watch how the AI answers move as adoption builds.
