Employers still are trying to coax their teams back to the office on a full-time basis five years after the Covid 19 pandemic upended the way white collar employees work.
But the methods are evolving. To attract talent, companies are seeking amenities from landlords that pre-Covid employees never dreamed of, like massive outdoor terraces, cafés and lounges, and purified air. It’s part of a drive to make work feel comfortable, even homey, and encourage collaboration — the latest buzzword in office politics.
Location, location, location used to mean being near transportation options. Now, it’s a hip residential neighborhood with shopping and entertainment that’s close to transportation. In addition, employers trying to attract young talent are obliged to communicate their purpose — what they do that creates value — to win over the best job candidates.
Though employees have gained some power in this equation, the growth of AI could balance the scales over time. White collar jobs would also be in the crosshairs of a possible recession, empowering more employers to crack down on office attendance.
Either way, the look and feel of offices is unlikely to return to the old model.
“The future of work is such, in our opinion, that employees today don’t want to come into their office building in the morning, take an elevator upstairs to their floor and sit in a cubicle for 15 hours. People don’t want to do that anymore, right? It’s all about wellbeing, comfort, hospitality, food, beverage, being together in a more social setting,” said Glen Weiss, executive vice president – office leasing and co-head of real estate at Vornado Realty Trust. The company owns Class A properties including One Penn Plaza and 1290 Avenue of the Americas, which is in the midst of an $50 million makeover to bring those kinds of amenities to the Midtown tower.
Still, whether employers like it or not, work will continue to be a smorgasbord of full-time, hybrid and remote options, experts say. Workers will need to be resilient and adaptable: A World Economic Forum report predicts that 65% of kids entering grade school today will work in jobs that currently don’t exist.
“These buildings that we’re designing need to support a workforce that is consolidating, getting smaller,” said Doug Hocking, a principal at Flatiron District-based architecture firm NBBJ, in charge of the commercial market for New York City.
For now, the demand for office space continues to be anemic. For the first quarter of 2025 in Manhattan, the vacancy rate stood at 10.4% for Class A buildings, 13.3% for Class B and 11.1% for Class C buildings, according to Franklin Wallach, executive managing director, research & business development at Colliers.
That’s nearly double the rate the first quarter of 2020, before the pandemic, when Class A and B buildings’ vacancy rates were 5.8% and Class C was 4.6%.
Asking rents are also below pre-pandemic levels even as prices for other goods have increased by more than 23% since 2020, according to federal labor statistics. The average for Manhattan’s Class A buildings stood at $81.54 per square foot in 2025, compared with $85.10 in 2020. Class B buildings are averaging $66.15 today, versus $67.94 in 2020, and Class C buildings are getting an average of $48.58 per square foot, versus $56.68 per square foot in 2020.
An uncertain economic environment that has roiled stock markets and upended world trade could undo any progress that has been made since the depths of the pandemic. JPMorgan said earlier this month that the odds of a global recession rose to 60% from 40%.
“If there actually is a recession, of course, it will have an impact on leasing. It always has, and that’s just what we’ll have to deal with,” said Weiss.
‘Triple-A properties’ leading the way
As the numbers illustrate, some buildings are faring better than others, and the so-called “triple-A properties” are leading the way to the future with amenities that were unheard of pre-pandemic — unless you worked for Google or Facebook.
When 1290 Avenue of the Americas completes its latest update, it will feature a 230-person town hall meeting complex and a 10,000-square foot rooftop park on the 17th floor, a new restaurant by Maple and Ash of Chicago in the lobby, and a high-end fitness center and a golf range on the concourse level. Tenants include financial firms Neuberger Berman and Oaktree Capital Management, law firms Linklaters and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield and Hachette Book Group.
“When you say the future, it’s about what do the employees want when they come to the office, where the key for the CEO is talent, and the recruitment of that talent,” said Weiss. “And they like it to be close to transportation. They like it to be high quality. They like to have a wellness, fitness feature. And they would like outdoor space. It’s no longer ‘I’ll take that floor. It’s good enough.’ That’s not how this works anymore.”
Weiss says the facelift is already bearing fruit. Asking rent for the building is in the $90s to $100s per square foot, “which, if you look across the street, everyone else is at the 70s and the 80s. We feel great about it,” he said.
Some observers call One Madison Avenue in Flatiron a blueprint for future office towers. Built over the old MetLife building, the recently completed construction marries classic architecture with modern style. Floor plates are large and flexible, materials are sustainable. The building was designed to be adaptable.
“You know, do we have to throw everything out every time we renovate? Or can we reuse it? Are there ways for us to sort of think about the impact of change as it relates to our goals for sustainability and for the environment?” asked Hocking who led the design team for One Madison Avenue when he was a principal at architecture firm KPF. He left as the building was under construction in 2022.
One Madison’s biggest tenants, Franklin Templeton and IBM, have their own large terraces where employees can congregate. Chelsea Piers gym moved into the lobby. Chef Daniel Boulud opened a rooftop steakhouse, La Tête d’Or, along with adjacent event and meeting space designed by David Rockwell and catered by Boulud.
One of the building’s greatest assets is the neighborhood, a hip residential area with a plethora of bars and restaurants. The building abuts the trendy Madison Square Park that offers summer concerts and the original Shake Shack.
“So the asset, basically, is in a location that’s really desirable from a commercial perspective, but also is a mixed-use district, and that is actually a really great spot for commercial buildings to be in, because people want to be in them more than they do in a central business district,” Hocking said.
That could be why the building is commanding a premium. Space at One Madison is going for an average $115 per square foot, according to landlord SL Green, and the building is 72% leased with full occupancy expected by the first quarter of 2026.
More like college campuses
Of course, employers aren’t doing this so employees can hang out all day and play games. Offices are being designed with productivity in mind. It’s all about “collaboration.” Which is why employees need to be in the office, according to firms like Goldman Sachs and other finance companies that are requiring employees to return to the 5-day in-office workweek. And why most industries are trying to get them there.
Landlords are heeding the call, with “much more collaborative space, lounge-type spaces, bars, restaurants,” said Craig Deitelzweig, president and CEO of Marx Realty. “What we’ve also seen is many more conferencing spaces, larger cafes. And I think that’s the future of the office.”
To inspire workers, the newest offices go beyond the cubicle or the open plan. Office buildings like One Madison are structured more like college campuses.
There could be “a wide variety of platforms, anywhere from alone rooms, together rooms, medium together rooms, casual rooms that are part of a cafe, to screens set up in the hallway where people can meet and have a spontaneous conversation,” said Peter Schubert, a partner in Ennead Architects International. “It really is kind of an orchestrated day now of conversations,” he said.
If people have to come back to the office, he said, they need a reason. “I think people want to come to work to learn, and that’s twofold. They want to learn from each other. But I think somehow the corporations, like universities, have to set up an exchange program of ideas that really makes people excited to be there and really sponsor key discussions,” he said.
New York, with its vibrant cultural scene, is leading the charge back. If people have to come to work, they want to be where the action is. And the industries here are pushing for it.
“I think what we’re going to see is more return to office in New York City as compared to other markets, mostly because of the fact that we have a concentration of of industries like financial services and health care and business services, which these sectors are clearly taking a very strong position in favor to to return to office,” said John Morgan, president of LHH’s Career Transition & Mobility and Leadership Development businesses.
Data shows that 19.3% of workers in New York worked from home in 2023, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by Flatworld Solutions, which was below the national average of 19.7% of workers.
Fear of getting downsized could be a motivator bringing people back. AI and other forms of automation have already impacted fields like accounting, coding and trading to name a few. And though some reports posit that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates, those jobs will require new skills.
“The worker of the future really has to understand and acquire new skills, new ways of working. So using all the different [Microsoft] Copilot tools, for example, is probably the number one skill right now we’re teaching people in their job search,” Morgan said.
He said occupations with healthy job growth prospects over the next decade include medical and health services managers, cybersecurity analysts and mechanical and industrial engineers.
Still, New Yorkers’ interest in remote work is actually on the rise. According to Google Trends’ “search interest index,” the term scored 36.21 out of 100 in 2020. That jumped to 64.45 in 2025.
Fully remote still works for some
Plenty of companies, particularly small businesses, have remained fully remote since the pandemic. Travel news site Skift went remote on March 14, 2020, the day New York shut down, and it has no intention of returning to a physical office space. The travel industry was hit hard by the pandemic, and Skift needed to save every penny, said CEO Rafat Ali.
Going remote allowed the company to hire people around the globe, saving money. For example, its research team works from India, where salaries are lower than in the states. All told, working remotely saves the small business $600,000 annually, Ali said. Some of that money is spent on lavish employee retreats. Last year, the group met up in Istanbul.
“There’s sort of this religiosity about remote-only, or in-person only. And the reality is, the answer is always in the middle, whatever works for you,” said Ali. He said there are going to be pros and cons, and “we’ve figured out workarounds on the cons.”
The pros include a larger talent pool. “To restrict the talent to within 30 miles of where your office is seems like such a loss,” Ali said. “Even in the best of times, it is tough in media, it’s freaking hard. And so if I can survive and thrive with a sort of a global workforce with a lower cost base … then, you know, it’s a win, win for us.”
No matter where a firm’s workforce is located, perhaps the biggest motivator for talent going forward will be understanding a company’s purpose, “the why” a company exists, said Jake Canull, head of the Americas for the Top Employers Institute, an Amsterdam-based organization that recognizes excellence in human resources practices. He explained it this way: “Three bricklayers were asked what they do for a living. One says, ‘I’m laying bricks here.’ One says ‘I’m building a wall,’and the last one says ‘I’m building a home for somebody.’”
Canull said a lot of organizations with both white collar and blue collar workforces are doubling down on communicating and expressing their why. He said it’s a new development, but he sees it as being critical for companies going forward to motivate their workforces. Whatever the work environment, whether it’s hybrid or in the office full time, the why, he said, is always going to matter most.
“Many people are motivated by the why they’re doing something. Most people are. And so it seems like a pretty fundamental thing, but that’s going to become really the crux of, I think, a human’s role in work is helping drive that.”
