Every generation of workers has experienced this moment. It’s the one where we are told our jobs and offices are set to disappear, all the result of some great big disruption. The dot-com boom promised physical presence would be optional. Offshoring threatened to hollow out white collar America. Smartphones put the entire workplace in our pockets. Remote work, accelerated dramatically by the Covid-19 pandemic, seemed to negate the need for dedicated space. But in reality? The office remained. And not just as a small part, but as a critical piece of the workplace, just with new adaptations to meet the moment.
timeline styles
2001 – 2004
Offshoring and globalization
"White-collar work is moving to Bangalore. American office jobs won't survive."
— Business press, 2003–04
What actually happened
Routine processing jobs moved offshore — data entry, call centers, back-office clerks. But higher-value roles grew to replace them. The U.S. added net white-collar employment through the decade as workers shifted toward client-facing and strategic functions.
Office employment: net positive by 2007
2008 – 2010
The Great Recession
"Companies will never return to pre-crisis headcounts. The era of the large corporate office is over."
— Fortune, 2009
What actually happened
Office employment bottomed in 2010 and recovered steadily. White-collar jobs surpassed pre-recession peaks by 2014. Availability rates fell across major markets through 2019. The recession accelerated some restructuring — it didn't shrink the office long-term.
White-collar peak surpassed by 2014
2010-2015
Broadband + cloud = "remote work revolution"
"The office is obsolete. Why would anyone commute when everything is in the cloud?"
— Tech media, 2012–13
What actually happened
Remote work stalled at roughly 3–4% of the workforce through 2019. Office leasing hit record highs in major metros by 2015–2019. Companies that went remote — Yahoo, IBM, Best Buy — reversed course. Office availability stayed near historic lows through the entire decade.
U.S. office availability near historic lows by 2019
2020 – 2022
Broadband + cloud = "remote work revolution"
"The pandemic has permanently ended the office. Downtown is dead."
— The Atlantic, NYT, Bloomberg, 2020–21
What actually happened
Attendance dropped 70%+ at peak. By 2023–24 most major employers had hybrid mandates. Availability rose — but concentrated in older, commodity-class buildings. Premium space stayed full. Office-based employment recovered to near pre-pandemic levels.
Availability elevated — concentrated in older stock
2023 – Present
Generative AI
"AI will automate 30% of all office work within 3 years. Knowledge workers are next."
— McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, 2023
Still unfolding
Early signals show AI automating tasks — drafting, coding, data analysis — rather than eliminating roles wholesale. BLS projects net office employment growth through 2034, with routine tasks declining and collaborative, strategic roles expanding. The pattern mirrors every prior wave.
BLS projects net office employment growth to 2034
2001 – 2004
Offshoring and globalization
"White-collar work is moving to Bangalore. American office jobs won't survive."
— Business press, 2003–04
What actually happened
Routine processing jobs moved offshore — data entry, call centers, back-office clerks. But higher-value roles grew to replace them. The U.S. added net white-collar employment through the decade as workers shifted toward client-facing and strategic functions.
Office employment: net positive by 2007
2008 – 2010
The Great Recession
"Companies will never return to pre-crisis headcounts. The era of the large corporate office is over."
— Fortune, 2009
What actually happened
Office employment bottomed in 2010 and recovered steadily. White-collar jobs surpassed pre-recession peaks by 2014. Availability rates fell across major markets through 2019. The recession accelerated some restructuring — it didn't shrink the office long-term.
White-collar peak surpassed by 2014
2010-2015
Broadband + cloud = "remote work revolution"
"The office is obsolete. Why would anyone commute when everything is in the cloud?"
— Tech media, 2012–13
What actually happened
Remote work stalled at roughly 3–4% of the workforce through 2019. Office leasing hit record highs in major metros by 2015–2019. Companies that went remote — Yahoo, IBM, Best Buy — reversed course. Office availability stayed near historic lows through the entire decade.
U.S. office availability near historic lows by 2019
2020 – 2022
Broadband + cloud = "remote work revolution"
"The pandemic has permanently ended the office. Downtown is dead."
— The Atlantic, NYT, Bloomberg, 2020–21
What actually happened
Attendance dropped 70%+ at peak. By 2023–24 most major employers had hybrid mandates. Availability rose — but concentrated in older, commodity-class buildings. Premium space stayed full. Office-based employment recovered to near pre-pandemic levels.
Availability elevated — concentrated in older stock
2023 – Present
Generative AI
"AI will automate 30% of all office work within 3 years. Knowledge workers are next."
— McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, 2023
Still unfolding
Early signals show AI automating tasks — drafting, coding, data analysis — rather than eliminating roles wholesale. BLS projects net office employment growth through 2034, with routine tasks declining and collaborative, strategic roles expanding. The pattern mirrors every prior wave.
BLS projects net office employment growth to 2034
And now? AI is just the latest in a long historical line, making the same case as before.
While it may seem like it could threaten it all, the reality is that the rise of artificial intelligence will very likely just be another disruptor that simply reshapes, with steady employment climbs regardless of what variant enters the ecosystem.
It’s already showing in the data.
Unemployment vs Office-sector Jobs
There is structural adaptation happening through absorption. Each moment removing categories of work, but work that, if we’re honest, was poorly suited to the in-person office environment in the first place (think routine, isolated, easily codified) and leaving behind and adding on more valuable, collaborative and dependent on proximity work roles in their wakes. It’s an evolution of office role responsibilities over outright elimination of positions.
Employment changes for selected occupations across five technology waves
The pattern is not coincidental.
AI targets the most automatable roles (such as office/admin, legal and business operations, see below) that historically have no inherent need for office presence. These are the same roles that went remote quickly in 2020 and never fully returned to office, setting in place a shift in office leasing that has since stabilized.
AI automation exposure vs telework rate
Office leasing vs Business Index
Rolling four-quarter leasing vs. pre-COVID average (2015–2019
Leasing activity, rolling four-quarter average vs. pre-COVID average (2015–2019
As stabilization rates show, it’s very likely the jobs AI would replace have already left the office, making AI’s impact now incremental at best, and carving out space for roles that do require in person presence to take on a much bigger stage presence.
The types of roles noted also showcase key themes that trust, judgement, creativity and coordination are the tasks that technology cannot replicate, and the runway is now clear to think about the work we complete in person together differently.
The work that AI will (and won’t) be able to replace
Some skills, rooted in social and emotional intelligence and that depend on traits like empathy, creativity and contextual understanding will continue to be ones that are challenging for machines to replicate.
On the other hand, those purely routine, data entry and quick process roles, could see people taking a step back to focus more on design, results validation and exception handling, or the ones making sure AI agents and robots are doing what they need to do to operate properly.
And in the middle? Roles that place humans and AI agents in the loop together, side by side, working through problems together.
Distribution of skills in the US, by technical automation potential
The application of skills will change as people shift to working with the managing AI.
[TABLE]
It’s creating a whole new set of workflows and experiential needs to integrate into a different kind of workplace experience, one that prioritizes interaction over individually driven deep work, and accounts for both human and robotic interaction.
An office for every disruptor
Every major change in work type (clerical to managerial, paper to computer, desktop to mobile, etc.) has triggered a redesign of physical office space.
While the office has never led the change, it always, even with several years lag, inevitably follows larger societal and behavioural shifts.
Late 1900's
Birth of the commercial office
The first commercial offices appeared in the late 19th century, particularly in the Northern industrial cities of the United States. The invention of the telephone and telegraph meant that for the first time the office could be situated away from factories or shops, allowing control over production and distribution to distant markets. Technology created a new work type — administrative and managerial work — and the office was literally invented to house it.
Early 1900's
The knowledge worker and the office landscape
The office mirrored the factory. Work was treated as a series of repeatable tasks to be optimized, and floor layouts reflected this — rows of identical desks under supervisor oversight, designed for efficiency and control over clerical labor. Management and executives become enclosed in private offices, outlining a hierarchical structure.
1960's
The knowledge worker and the office landscape
As work became more cognitive and collaborative, rigid layouts were challenged. In 1958, the Quickborner Group introduced Bürolandschaft ("office landscape"), which rejected rigid bureaucratic structures and aligned spatial organization with workflow and internal communications needs. Teams were organically grouped together based on workflow, with indoor plants used to define loose boundaries — encouraging staff of all levels to sit together in one open floor plan to increase collaboration and eliminate hierarchy.
1980's
The personal computer and the cubicle
New technology drove the next redesign. The increased use of personal computers, printers, and fax machines meant offices needed to be designed to house cables, leading buildings to incorporate raised access floors and suspended ceilings. Office furniture changed significantly, with Herman Miller developing static "system furniture" that adopted personal panel screens and storage within the open plan. The cubicle became the dominant response — private enough for focused screen work, dense enough to pack in headcount.
1990's
Mobility and the untethering from the desk
The 1990s brought a shift in work habits as workers grew mobile. Emerging technologies like cellular phones and laptops untethered the employee from the desk. As personal computers, laptops, and eventually smartphones entered the workplace, new and more flexible approaches such as agile working and activity-based working gained popularity. Staff were no longer tied to a single desk, and it became normal to see people working in cafes, coffee shops, and from home.
2000's
The "cool office" and the collaboration ideal
This is the decade that most directly dismantled the cubicle as a cultural norm. Silicon Valley's open, amenity-rich, casual offices became the aspirational template for a generation of companies seeking to signal creativity, energy, and cultural modernity. Cubicles were demolished, fixed desks were replaced by shared worktables, and ping pong tables, exposed concrete, and bean bag seating became signifiers of a particular kind of workplace culture. The logic was collaboration: remove barriers, and ideas will flow. The dot-com era and the influence of management thinkers like Peter Drucker instilled a new mindset about the knowledge economy and the importance of innovation, productivity, and culture. For tech companies on hiring binges, the office became a key selling point — a tool for talent attraction as much as a place to work. The internet, which facilitated the flow of information from nearly anywhere in the world, began enabling individuals to establish home offices, and with the entrepreneurial movement arising from the venture-capital-fueled dot-com era, freelancing and coworking began taking off, creating a whole new vertical in the real estate industry.
2010s's
Activity-based working
In the 2010s, the activity-based working model emerged to overcome the limitations of old open office designs. Instead of uniform workspaces, this approach offered a variety of workspaces tailored to different needs, encouraging collaboration and providing an environment for privacy and specialized tasks. Activity-based offices provide different workstations for diverse work tasks, typically consisting of unassigned workstations on a floor plan tailored to host different activities including collaborative work such as meeting rooms and team benches, relaxation and socialization in breakout rooms and lounges, and concentration in quiet rooms.
As each work type has evolved, so has the physical office space. The question this pattern leaves is, in a world where AI absorbs more solo and mundane task-based work that drives many current office layouts,
What comes next?
And when?
The office meets AI
AI has already started to change the way we work with studies highlighting the substantial gains surrounding individual productivity.
The next frontier for AI will be centered around enterprise-level adoption and collective productivity to overcome fragmented and redundant work. We’ve seen many workforces currently functioning at capacity, with lower employee engagement leading to revenue and losses, as well as overall negative emotions in the workplace. As organizations begin to scale and bridge gaps of time and distance, we can start to see how a new work type is starting to form and along with it, begin to plan around a new physical office space to match.
One where humans and robots collaborate in parallel, and organizations become increasingly flexible, collaborative and socially-focused, reaffirming the office as the space for employees to come to socialize and collaborate with colleagues.
Reasons to come to the office
Microsoft notes this shift with a conceptual reorg, less around people and roles, and more a “work chart” ecosystem in which hybrid human and agent teams can quickly assemble and disassemble based on task, with spaces to match critical needs.
Among the perks? Spaces truly built for richer team connection and relationship building, providing net positive outcomes for company culture and overall senses of belonging to something more meaningful and bigger than self.
AI power users spend more time collaborating virtually, learning, and socializing
It’s a shift that, if executed well, could reverse current global workplace engagement trends, reinvigorating spaces that are currently full of disengaged or passively engaged colleagues, costing companies productivity, collaboration and large financial losses.
The current economic cost is massive (~$10T, ~9% of GDP), reinforcing that engagement isn’t a “soft” metric—it directly impacts output, innovation, and team effectiveness.
Global employee engagement drops after reaching historic high
Employee engagement, wellbeing and negative daily emotions by leadership level
Engagement and productivity are tightly linked at the team level, presenting a real opportunity and need for organizations to reinvent their workforce and focus on improving overall employee engagement at the core of office strategy to mitigate current financial losses and bridge a widening gap between engaged and disengaged workers.
It’s critical we get this right.
Modern spaces, community-driven by design
We should think of the modern office like a well-designed city or community. Spaces should center around people’s needs and design for a wide range of experiences and performance types.
This could look like having an established central connection point in the space that draws people to build bonds and trust, intentional places for teams to conduct heads down work and stay connected, smaller locations to meet and conduct quick creative brainstorms, established and culturally-driven structured learning hubs, and places to renew, recharge and care for well-being throughout the day like thoughtfully designed break or meditation rooms.
In addition to being built for peak collaboration and flexibility, amenities and higher quality experiences and spaces will continue to win the day as buildings that feel new and modern continue to perform best in market. Trophy assets, where modern spaces build-outs have been prioritized continue to win the day, creating fresh market needs for new office builds, older office retrofits and obsolete office removals to rebuilds to meet the times.
Not absorption by building age (U.S.)
Regardless of the cycle we are in, office reflects the human needs behind the work itself
We work better together.
As long as work remains human, the need for office will always be there.
AI’s impact, while substantial, will likely just be the latest shift creating a need to refine our office strategies around how and where we conduct our daily work best.
This might mean fewer, but better, higher quality-collaborative office environments and vacancies that don’t disappear but recycle or realign to the needs of the latest office era.
It’s more a vibe shift. A matching of energies. Or simply, a time to make our offices more intentional and in the now than ever.
But what AI won’t do is erase the need for the office entirely.
In fact, the space and opportunities around socialization and collaboration that AI could open just might make our offices more relevant than ever.
Reach out to one of our experts for more information.
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Jeffrey L. Heller, SIOR
Principal and Executive Director
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Steven Geltzeiler
Senior Vice President
