Offices are fuller than at any point since 2020
Every year CBRE measures how much of its clients' office space is actually being used. In 2025, the global average reached 53% — a big jump from 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023. It is the highest figure since before March 2020.
That is still short of target — most organisations (79%) want utilisation above 65% — but it is the largest single-year gain in five years.
On the busiest day the picture flips. Peak utilisation now averages 80%, passing target for the first time since the pandemic. The risk has reversed: not empty floors, but crowded ones on a Tuesday.
More people than desks
The clearest sign hybrid has settled in is the occupancy rate — people assigned to a building against the seats inside it. Globally it reached 111%, up from 101%, an all-time high.
Organisations now assign more staff than they have desks and rely on them not all turning up at once. Space per person is the tightest ever recorded: 14.7 m², down from 16.0 m².
Desk sharing is now standard. Almost seven in ten organisations (69%) report more than 40% of their people sharing a desk, and not one still targets one desk per person.
But the ambition has cooled. Nearly half (48%) aim for a modest 1.01 to 1.49 people per seat, and only a third push beyond 1.5:1 — down from 62%. Ratios are increasingly set from evidence: job function (83%), utilisation data (78%) and supply and demand (68%).
Three days in, and everyone picks Tuesday
Almost every organisation (96%) has a stated in-office policy, and the most common is three or more days a week — up from 53% to 66% in a year. The extremes have gone: 5% fully in-office, none fully remote, and the even office-home split fell from 33% to 23%.
The catch is that everyone picks the same days. Nearly three-quarters (73%) report Tuesday as their busiest; Monday and Friday are close to empty. That is how you get an 80% peak alongside a 53% average — the same building crowded and quiet in one week.
The gap between the policy and the practice
Policies are clear. Behaviour is not. Seven in ten say employees are in less often than leaders require, up from 61%. The gap is widening.
Measuring and enforcing are different things: most track attendance, but only 29% communicate, measure and enforce. Manager training, meanwhile, is the least-funded part of hybrid programmes for the third year running — even though manager discretion decides how hybrid actually works.
What it adds up to
Hybrid is now the reason portfolios shrink, not the excuse. 57% expect contraction over three years, up from 48%, and two-thirds of them give the same reason: less space needed because of hybrid work.
The office is not disappearing. It is getting smaller, busier and more deliberate.
- Design for the peak, not the average. An 80% peak sets the experience, not the 53% average.
- The 1:1 desk is gone. Plan for 1.01–1.49 people per seat, set from job function and real utilisation data.
- Spread the week. With 73% peaking on Tuesday, your cheapest capacity is Monday and Friday.
- Policy alone does not fill a building. The 70% gap is a management problem before a real estate one.
Based on CBRE's 2026 Global Workplace & Occupancy Insights, Part 1, by Susan Wasmund and Jess Ultreras. The study draws on five years of benchmarking and sentiment surveys covering 28 million m² of client portfolios.