Nearly Half of Surveyed Workers With Recent Weekday Office Days Had No In-Person Meetings

Nearly half of surveyed full-time, college-educated U.S. workers whose latest office day was a weekday in the prior week reported no in-person meetings, showing that attendance did not guarantee face-to-face collaboration.

New York Fed research economist Natalia Emanuel and University of Virginia economist Emma Harrington conducted the survey in September 2026. They recruited 2,422 full-time, college-educated U.S. workers through Prolific; data-quality and completion checks left 1,835 people in the final sample. The questions focused on each respondent’s most recent weekday in the office during the prior week. Within that group, 48.8% reported no in-person meetings with teammates or other colleagues.

The survey also captured whether teammates were present on that office day. At least one teammate was out of the office for 70.6% of respondents, and respondents were missing an average of 34.3% of their teams. These figures describe attendance on the respondents’ most recent office day, alongside the separate measure of whether they held in-person meetings.

Increased geographic dispersion accounted for 48% of lost face-to-face contact, while colleagues’ nonattendance accounted for 37%. Their analysis also identified uncoordinated schedules and online meetings among workers in the same office as factors in the gap between office attendance and in-person interaction.

At one Fortune 500 company, about 60% of corporate employees had teammates who worked fully remotely or in distant offices in 2026. The comparable share before the pandemic was 22%. The figures describe that employer alone and are not an estimate for Fortune 500 companies as a group.

The results measure workplace interactions, not whether workers felt isolated. The survey sample was limited to full-time, college-educated workers recruited through Prolific, so it does not establish how common these experiences are among all U.S. workers. It also does not show that office attendance policies caused the lack of in-person meetings.

The findings are preliminary. Their study examines how team locations and attendance patterns relate to face-to-face contact on office days.