At an office in SoHo, rows of desks sit empty, while a shaggy dog — shadowing an owner nostalgic for work-from-home comforts — wanders the conference rooms. At a tech workplace downtown, a gaggle of 20-somethings divide into teams, calling out “Who’s on the Orange team?” and “We’re going to kill it!” as part of a game night enticing them back to in-person work. On the subway, commuters delight in a once-unimaginable indulgence: bag-spreading across two seats.

About a year and a half after Mayor Eric Adams chided workers — “You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day!” — New York’s offices in late August were under 41 percent of their prepandemic occupancy. Just 9 percent of the city’s office workers were going in five days a week at the start of the year, according to the Partnership for New York City, a business group. Remote-work levels crisscrossing the country are more mixed, with just under one-third of America’s workdays […]