The return-to-office trend is real — and it’s spectacular

More employees now work in New York City offices than in July of 2019, according to the Placer.ai Office Index.

That’s right: The research platform, which uses cellphone data to track comings and goings at commercial buildings nationwide, found 1.3% more staffers at Manhattan desks last month than were there before the pandemic.

The news will shock those who swallow the “work-from-home” propaganda, which serves the agenda of elected officials and others in public life who oppose new office construction.

The fantasy of abandoned office buildings similarly energizes woke types who dream of a dystopian urban future when empty towers can be converted into homeless shelters.

The Placer.ai data — however imperfect, as any survey of a half-billion-square-foot market will be — debunks the myth that “hybrid” work has put commercial real estate, the engine of this city’s economy and its single largest generator of tax revenue, on the ropes. 

In fact, the work-from-home era in the Big Apple is “in the rear-view mirror,” as leading real estate brokerage JLL reported. 

New York City’s recovery stands apart from the rest of the US, Placer.ai found.

Only the much smaller Miami area saw office visits nearly even with 2019 levels, with office use in Los Angeles and Chicago 34% below the pre-pandemic benchmark. Analysts see little prospect of other cities catching up soon.

But in Manhattan, office vacancy fell this year to around 16%, the lowest since 2019 — and to near-zero in prime buildings. 

Would companies like Amazon, Goodwin Procter and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. be leasing expensive space if nobody was coming in to work?

Consider, too, that publicly traded developer BXP is putting up a new Madison Avenue tower near Grand Central Terminal — despite having pre-leased only 30% of its nearly 1 million square feet. 

BXP, which has shareholders to worry about, is confident enough not to sweat over any supposed hybrid-work damage.

The return-to-office flood is driving a boom in fast-casual Midtown and Downtown eateries as well.

In recent months, Sweetgreen, Pret-a-Manger, Joe & the Juice, Farmer J, Pollo Campero and others signed leases for long-vacant retail spaces — “a function of people returning five days a week,” a prominent real estate broker told The Post.

Yet Placer.ai’s latest survey will likely be downplayed or altogether ignored by influential journalists with a stake in wildly exaggerating the extent of home-based work.

Many more of them perform their toils from the comforts of home than do financial-service workers, lawyers, real estate agents and other professionals whose bosses have called them back to their desks. 

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently cited the “extraordinary abuse” of remote work in his edict requiring most employees to return to their offices five days a week.

He was too tactful to mention the joys of entertaining one’s cats between responding to emails.

As The Post has reported time and again, the large-scale return to offices is real and spreading, notwithstanding gloomy data from sources like the Kastle Systems Back-to-Work Barometer — the most widely cited source of misinformation on office occupancy.

The survey’s method of counting card swipes at certain buildings is taken as gospel by those unaware of its limitations. 

Kastle’s tally monitors attendance only at buildings where it’s paid to provide security products and services, and its sample includes very few of the best-equipped, best-located buildings with the highest physical office occupancy.

At our last check, for example, Kastle’s survey covered exactly one of 40 buildings owned by SL Green, the city’s largest commercial landlord, and no properties owned by 10 of the 11 next-largest landlords.

It’s like purporting to comprehensively explain African mammal life without including elephants, lions, rhinos and giraffes.

The media also misinterpret more reliable data from other sources. 

A recent Crain’s article quoted the Partnership for New York City’s March estimate that “57% of Manhattan office workers had returned on the average workday.”

That made it sound as if Manhattan offices that were full before 2020 are now nearly half-empty. But offices were rarely 100% full on any given day before the pandemic, as anyone who works in one knows.

Crain’s left out the Partnership’s more meaningful finding: That 57% office attendance last spring “equated to 76% of pre-pandemic attendance.”

In other words, pre-pandemic offices were not 100% occupied — they never were —  but 75% occupied, and this year’s spring office attendance relative to 2019 reflected an increase year over year.

Bottom line: The return-to-office trend continues apace, even if surveys don’t all agree on the exact extent.

It’s time for the mainstream media to accept reality, no matter how it may upset “reporters” who never leave the house.