The Trial Balance is CFO.com’s weekly preview of stories, stats and events to help you prepare.
Part 1 — New York City leads U.S. in RTO
With return-to-office efforts being implemented across the country, new data from Placer.ai indicates that in the U.S., New York City is closest, by far, to pre-pandemic in-office working rates.
Nationwide, office visits were 30.7% below April 2019 levels. However, New York City traffic was just 5.5% short of pre-pandemic traffic, the smallest drop in the country. Miami followed, down 15.3%, while other major metropolitan areas like Atlanta and Dallas stayed consistent with the national average.
The data comes from Placer.ai’s Office Index, which uses anonymized location information from cell phones to measure real-world foot traffic to more than 800 office buildings across 11 U.S. cities.
Boston showed moderate improvement, though it still trailed New York City and Miami. San Francisco, while still the furthest from full recovery compared to the other cities in the report, posted the strongest year-over-year growth. This may reflect the impact of return-to-office mandates in the tech sector despite the numerous challenges the city faces that impact the workers there.
April marked the third-busiest office month since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, behind only October and July 2024. Hybrid trends remain dominant, with midweek in-office appearances, especially Tuesdays and Wednesdays, surpassing 2019 levels in NYC. Mondays and Fridays continue to lag, likely due to hybrid work models allowing some employees to skip the commute and work from home on those days.
Part 2 — This week
Here’s a list of important market events slated for the week ahead.
Monday, May 19
Tuesday, May 20
- Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin speaks
- Boston Fed President Susan Collins at the Fed Listens event
- St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem speaks
- Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler speaks
Wednesday, May 21
Thursday, May 22
- Initial jobless claims, week of May 17
- S&P flash U.S. services PMI, May
- S&P flash U.S. manufacturing PMI, May
Friday, May 23
Part 3 — Gartner CFO and Finance Executive Conference coverage
This week, some of the CFO.com team will be in National Harbor, Maryland, for Gartner’s CFO and Finance Executive Conference. There will be an event takeaway piece published this week (5/21), as well as multiple interviews from the event from CFOs and thought leaders that will roll out over the next few weeks.
