The Current Landscape of Hybrid and Remote Work Across U.S. Workers

For most nonprofits, “nimble” is the name of the game. Organizations of all kinds face challenges and calls for change periodically, and it is those groups most able to think creatively and act in new ways that have proven sustainable in the long run. Nonprofits and nonprofit practitioners have arguably never needed to exercise more nimbleness and adaptability than they have in the past five years. But they are not alone. Across every sector, organizational agility and engagement — whether in finding new ways to attract and retain talent, or rethinking organizational models — has been tested since 2020.

A “Temporary” Solution

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency and, eight weeks later, classified the outbreak of coronavirus as a pandemic. Over 7 million people lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. Health concerns forced every organization to adapt rapidly, and remote work became part of a new normal for millions of workers.

Out of this shift has emerged the widespread adoption of the hybrid work model, a way of working that makes use of in-person and remote work time. While disability advocates have long sought avenues for remote work, over the past few years, organizations have needed to undertake a review of their policies, procedures, and practices on flexible working arrangements and embrace changes for how all staff conduct their work. What began as a temporary solution to an unexpected problem has evolved into a long-term strategy for many organizations. As a result, this new normal is reshaping how employees collaborate, manage their time, and engage with their roles.

Too often, however, debates about the efficacy — and even the extent — of hybrid work have only been supported by anecdotes and comparisons to what individual employers or employees remember as “normal” workplace habits in the “before times.” As a data-driven observer of philanthropy, the Johnson Center recently completed a project that required us to conduct a research-informed review of hybrid work in four dimensions:

What is the current status of in-person work?
How prevalent is hybrid work, and how has that changed over time since the pandemic?
What does early research show as the strengths and challenges of hybrid work from both an employer and employee perspective?
Where do we go from here?

This research brief is extracted from the project, a larger research initiative conducted by the Johnson Center through summer 2025, and we share it here broadly to help inform the sector as the nonprofit workspace and operating environment continue to evolve.

Where are we now?

One of the best sources of office occupancy information is anonymized datasets drawn from access card data — swipe cards or proximity cards used with an electronic reader instead of physical keys to access office spaces, especially in larger or newer buildings. Kastle is one large provider of access card systems, and the company has made public de-identified access card usage data from ten major metro areas since 2020.

As of one week ago — August 2025 — Kastle’s data show that average weekly office occupancy rates currently average 52% across ten major metro areas. Compare that to office occupancy of 90% or greater prior to the pandemic. After gradually rising since 2021, occupancy began to plateau in 2024 across most metro areas, suggesting employers and employees have reached a new “steady state” for in-office expectations.

A Small Subset of the Workforce

A careful review of that last sentence reveals a key nuance: the Gallup survey represents the attitudes of workers who were able to be remote at all. A fuller view of the picture, across all workplaces and industries, shows that remote work, let alone hybrid work, is not the experience for most workers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024), 77% of all private sector workers work only on site. Roughly equal shares work either fully remote (11%) or in a hybrid arrangement, combining some on-site and some remote time (12%).

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 77% of all private sector workers work only on-site. Roughly equal shares work either fully remote (11%) or in a hybrid arrangement, combining some on-site and some remote time (12%).”

In other words, four in every five American private sector workers only work on site; only one in ten works either wholly or partly remote. Importantly, those figures are relatively consistent with data from 2022 and 2023, meaning that, once society began to restabilize after the deepest pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, most workers went fully back to the office, the jobsite, etc. (Demsas, 2024).

The Nonprofit and Philanthropic Workforce

We are not aware of any data that systematically tracks the distribution of on-site, hybrid, or remote work environments within the philanthropic sector. We have every reason to believe, however, that our sector follows the same general trends as the workforce at large.

After all, our sector contains multitudes: we employ direct service healthcare workers, investment analysts, museum curators, marketing professionals, community organizers, and countless others. Some of this work can be done remotely, but much of it cannot.

The key takeaway, then, is this: defaulting to an expectation — in our sector or outside of it — that most workers are conducting some or all of their business remotely would be untrue. Five years out from the onset of a global pandemic, the vast majority of American workers have returned to fully on-site work.

FURTHER READING
For additional information about the prevalence of hybrid work across the U.S. workforce, as well as the documented strengths and challenges of hybrid work, please review our full research summary, available here.

The Current Landscape of Hybrid and Remote Work Across U.S. Workers

A “Temporary” Solution

Where are we now?

A Small Subset of the Workforce

The Nonprofit and Philanthropic Workforce

The Nonprofit Workforce is in Crisis

Philanthropy’s Next Gen Is Starting to Make Big Changes

The Role of Employee Belonging in Organizational Transformation

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