New York City is back, according to the media. Example… “The return-to-office trend is real — and it’s spectacular for NYC” (New York Post, August 17, 2025):
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.
What does the lying stock market say? Here’s a 20-year chart for Vornado, a well-managed REIT whose portfolio is primarily office buildings and retail in New York City:
It’s gone from about $100 (sixty 2005 dollars adjusted for Bidenflation) to $37 today.
What about what one can see with one’s lying eyes? I visited a reader who lives near Wall Street and we surveyed some impressive towers from his 45th floor windows. We looked into the former Chase Manhattan building, fronted by an impressive Dubuffet sculpture, and found just a handful of workers at their desks at 2 pm. A nearby former Deutsche Bank tower remains vacant years after a renovation project started. In between is what used to be a name-brand hotel, now home to migrants for whom taxpayers foot the bill (their bicycles are chained up across the street):
The apparent lack of office workers means that there is more room for tourists, e.g., Fearless Tourist backs up Fearless Girl (“commissioned by State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), a large asset management company, to promote gender diversity initiatives and an index fund focused on gender-diverse companies with a relatively high percentage of women in senior leadership”):
The National Parks Service is there with 100 percent of exhibits in the “National Memorial” devoted to Americans who identify as “women”:
These exhibits that focus on a single gender ID (out of 74 recognized by Science) have apparently been up since 2021 (“Women’s Work, Never Praised, Never Done by Deb Willis, retrieving the stories of Black women in the struggle for the vote.”).
Consistent with the lack of observed office workers we found quite a few vacant storefronts, e.g.,
Maybe the retail space can be turned into mosques (masjids)? Here’s one a short walk north:
What about vacancy rates? From Moody’s, May 2025:
The current vacancy rate is a little high, but it doesn’t seem high enough to account for the observed emptiness of the Wall St. area or the terrible performance of Vornado.
They used to have an expression in NYC:
The fastest way to get rid of something in New York is to chain it to a lamp post.
Looks like they have their “fridges” chained up too.
My memories of Wall Street in the ’80s were all the guys in Brooks Brothers puffing on reefers (marijuana cigarettes), and the women in business clothes but wearing Reeboks on the subway, with their dress shoes in their purse, which they strapped across their chest as a security measure. I still keep my wallet in my front pocket to this day.
I guess I have to be the one to say it, but that girl statue bears a striking resemblance to future Nobel Prize winner, and King of Sweden, Greta T. My wife didn’t think it was very funny to name the next Cat 5 hurricane, Hurricane Greta. In the ’80s if you would have looked up at a building or taken a picture of a statue, crooks would have instantly marked you for a tourist and robbed you. Looks almost like Wally World now.
> women in business clothes but wearing Reeboks
“Yuppies” was the word I was looking for, and a large reason for how we got into the mess we’re in. They flipped 180 on the “Peace and Love” thing to “Look out for No. 1” when they turned 30 something… They kept the sanctimonious (yet ostensible) do-gooderism B.S. and the weed, but somehow worked as a team to concentrate generational wealth and power, which is going to be transferred into the hands of the…[shudder]
I really should stop reading Phil’s blog, it makes me remember where I am. Pass the reefer, man.
All job leads now say on-site, but it makes lions wonder how strictly that’s being enforced, outside the top tier, post DOGE. As Louis Rossmann used to say before he became a gootube zillionaire, New York real estate is a scam. It was always just a small number of wealthy guys squatting on everything. The fair market price was always much lower.