The return-to-office rate in New York City has reached a fever pitch, with a leading provider of foot traffic data finding occupancy hitting more than 80% of its pre-pandemic average in March 2024. Ahead of the original Wall Street, though, is the city that has become known as “Wall Street South”: Miami, where foot traffic has exceeded 85% of its pre-pandemic average.
The data comes from Placer.ai, which describes itself as a location intelligence firm, and its March 2024 Office Index, showing office buildings in New York and Miami far outpacing the national average, which shows offices to be 63% as full as they were pre-pandemic. The widest before-and-after gap was in San Francisco, which has struggled mightily to regain its business district and is still only 50% of the way there.
Nonetheless, Placer.ai wrote in the report, San Francisco leads other major U.S. cities in year-over-year office visit growth, “perhaps reflecting the upswing in demand for office space that has observers bullish about local market prospects.”
In Miami, tech companies are driving the return, Placer.ai posited, and in New York, it’s big banks. Visits to Miami office buildings last month reached a four-year high, and the bulk of those buildings might be filled with employees at the many tech giants who have opened up shop in the coastal area since the pandemic began.
But there’s also that whole “Wall Street South” thing.
‘Wall Street South’ aligned with its northern sibling’s RTO push
Some big name companies that have headed to South Florida in recent years include Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Citadel, and Uber. A few months back, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced plans to move home to Miami, which sparked rumors that the tech giant he once led might soon after establish a presence there too. The renewed foot traffic is likely good news to Tesla founder Elon Musk, who has crowed that remote workers are just “pretending” to work.
Miami in particular has acquired the nickname of Wall Street South, following its long-time status as the “sixth borough” of New York. The sun is drawing leaders in both finance and tech, and the swelling foot traffic shows they are bringing a businesslike quality to the city. Larry Robbins, founder of $2.3 billion hedge fund Glenview Capital Management, recently remarked to Bloomberg on becoming the latest to move from New York to Florida. “I know of no business that has generated long term success by driving away its highest paying customers,” Robbins, whose personal net worth exceeds $2 billion, said. “I am in fear for New York’s most vulnerable to become victimized by the great migration.”
Between 2012 and 2022, West Palm Beach saw 90% growth in residents with over $10 million in investable assets. A lot of this occurred in the first year of the pandemic, when more high earners moved to Florida than to any other state—nearly four times as many as moved to Texas, their second most popular destination.
Miami is “going through a renaissance at all levels,” Felice Gorordo, CEO of tech firm eMerge Americas, told Yahoo Finance last year. “But especially in terms of technology.”
Wall Street CEOs want to be in the office
Up in New York, the finance sector is the driving force behind increased foot traffic, Placer.ai said. That may come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed the comments of major bank CEOs like Jamie Dimon, David Solomon and James Gorman, each of whom have loudly expressed their disdain for distributed work—and held that line even back before vaccines were widely available. Indeed, the finance sector has long been leading the back-to-office push, with varied levels of success.
Per Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon, remote work has been nothing more than a temporary “aberration.” Morgan Stanley chairman and CEO James Gorman said remote work is simply not an option for his workers, though he acknowledged that he’s unlikely to successfully lure his workers into the office five full days per week. And pro-office stalwart Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has scolded managers who work from home, and maintained that working anywhere but in-person is a disaster for young new workforce entrants and anyone they work with.
Luckily for those bosses, the tides seem to be turning in their favor. Though it’s unlikely that a full office return will ever quite materialize, cubicles are undeniably filling up. Per data from security firm Kastle Systems exclusively provided to Fortune, offices in the ten major U.S. metropolitan areas were 48% full, after ten consecutive weeks of cresting just over 50% full.
To be sure, offices tend to empty out during the summer and holiday seasons, earlier Kastle data confirms, but if Miami is any indication, the allure of beach days is no longer so powerful at keeping workers from their desks.
