Tech companies were among the first to send workers home, and they're likely to have vast numbers of jobs that can be done fully remotely — but they're still betting that offices will be the future.
Tech companies held 36 of the 100 biggest office leases in 2021, up from 18 in 2020, per a new CBRE analysis.
- That amounts to 11.4 million square feet of office space.
- In second place is the federal government, which has 5.1 million square feet of the 100 biggest leases — less than half of what the tech industry has.
Overall, office leasing in the U.S. was up nearly 27% last year, CBRE's Manish Kashyap notes. "The tech industry is the big engine there.”
The fact that some of the most remote-capable companies in the country are gobbling up office space and expecting employees to come back to work in-person signals that fully remote work won't be the norm once the pandemic is behind us.