The Gap Between Planned and Actual Office Space Use in 2026

Office utilization reached 56% globally in 2026, according to JLL's latest occupancy planning benchmark. That represents an improvement over the previous two years, but organizations are still using considerably less space than their planning targets anticipate. The gap between actual and target utilization now stands at 18 percentage points. Understanding why that gap persists matters for enterprise real estate teams deciding how much space they need, how it should be configured and whether existing attendance policies are producing the expected results.

How much office space is actually being used in 2026?

JLL's Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026, published in May 2026, draws on 84 organizations representing 716 million square feet of real estate across North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.

The report puts global office utilization at 56%, compared with 54% in 2025 and 49% in 2024. Although utilization has increased by seven percentage points over two years, it remains below JLL's reported pre-pandemic benchmark of 61%.

The direction of travel is clear: organizations are making greater use of their workplaces than they were two years ago. However, a rising utilization rate does not automatically establish that an office portfolio is appropriately sized.

Utilization measures how available space is used under a particular measurement method. It should not be interpreted as the percentage of employees attending the office, the percentage of leased space occupied by tenants or a direct measure of workplace productivity.

The gap between planned and actual utilization is narrowing

One of the report's most significant findings is that the difference between actual and target utilization has narrowed for the first time since JLL began tracking it.

The gap stood at 25 percentage points in both 2024 and 2025. In 2026, it declined to 18 percentage points.

That seven-point improvement might initially suggest that organizations have substantially increased how efficiently they use their offices. The underlying figures tell a more nuanced story.

JLL reports that actual utilization increased by two percentage points between 2025 and 2026, while target utilization declined by five percentage points. In other words, the gap narrowed partly because organizations adjusted their expectations, not simply because their workplaces became more heavily used.

This distinction matters when evaluating progress against an internal occupancy target.

A workplace can move closer to its target because more people use the available space, because its capacity changes, because the target is revised or through some combination of those factors.

These scenarios have different implications for real estate planning. An organization that increases utilization without changing its footprint may face different operational decisions from one that reaches its target by reducing available space.

Why a utilization gap does not automatically mean excess office space

A utilization figure below 100% does not necessarily indicate that an organization has more space than it needs.

Enterprise workplaces must accommodate variations in attendance, different working patterns and the activities that employees perform throughout the day.

For example, an office may experience relatively low average utilization while facing capacity pressure on particular weekdays. Meeting rooms may be heavily booked even when individual workstations remain available. Specialized teams may also need dedicated environments that cannot be reassigned freely.

Consequently, reducing office space solely because average utilization is below target could create capacity problems at the times when demand is highest.

Before interpreting a utilization gap as an opportunity to reduce the footprint, enterprise real estate teams should distinguish between several measurements:

These measurements answer different questions. Using them together can help distinguish a genuine capacity surplus from uneven demand or a mismatch between workplace design and employee needs.

Technical spaces face a substantially wider utilization gap

JLL's findings also reveal that utilization challenges are not evenly distributed across different types of corporate real estate.

Technical environments, including laboratories, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, data centers and other specialized spaces, operate under different constraints from conventional offices.

Within the technical-space portfolio described in the report, utilization stands at 45%, compared with a target of 72%.

JLL reports that 51 accounts manage approximately 110.5 million square feet of technical space within portfolios totaling 486 million square feet. Technical space therefore represents nearly 23% of the managed area in that subset.

That 23% figure should not be interpreted as the proportion of technical space across every organization in JLL's wider 84-organization benchmark.

For specialized environments, utilization is also more difficult to interpret through conventional workplace metrics.

A laboratory may require equipment, safety clearances or controlled conditions that limit how frequently the space can be occupied. A manufacturing facility may operate according to production schedules rather than employee attendance patterns. A data center's operational requirements cannot be assessed using the same assumptions as an office workstation.

These differences mean that a technical-space utilization gap does not necessarily represent capacity that can be eliminated or reassigned.

Enterprise real estate teams need measurement approaches suited to each environment, including equipment use, operational requirements and the consequences of reducing available capacity.

Return-to-office requirements are increasing, but utilization is rising more slowly

JLL's 2026 benchmark shows that hybrid work remains widespread, while organizations are introducing more structured attendance requirements.

Eighty percent of participating organizations operate a hybrid work program, up from 77% in 2025.

Meanwhile, 62% require employees to attend the office for a fixed number of days, compared with 49% in 2025.

The report also indicates that 70% of employees attend the office three to five days per week.

These findings describe a workplace environment in which hybrid arrangements remain common but employee attendance is increasingly governed by defined expectations.

However, the increase in mandatory attendance requirements should not be treated as a direct measure of how efficiently office space is being used.

For a real estate team, the practical question is not simply whether employees are returning to the office. It is whether the existing workplace configuration matches their actual patterns of use.

An organization could experience increasing attendance while still maintaining more individual workstations than it needs. Alternatively, it could experience pressure on meeting rooms and collaborative spaces without reaching its overall utilization target.

These are different planning problems and may require different responses.

Better occupancy planning depends on better data

JLL's report identifies improving space data accuracy as the second-highest corporate real estate priority in 2026, behind portfolio optimization.

At the same time, organizations are exploring more advanced analytical tools, including AI-assisted occupancy planning.

Only 8% of surveyed organizations have progressed beyond pilot programs to active optimization or scaling of AI in occupancy planning. Privacy concerns are cited as a barrier by 70%, while 73% already have some form of data governance program.

These figures suggest that many organizations are still developing the infrastructure needed to use workplace data consistently.

Before introducing more sophisticated planning tools, enterprise real estate teams need reliable information about available capacity, how spaces are classified, when they are occupied and how utilization is measured.

Inconsistent definitions can produce misleading comparisons. For example, a building-level attendance count cannot establish whether meeting rooms are being used efficiently, and a workstation occupancy measure cannot describe the operational utilization of a laboratory.

Technology can help analyze these differences, but it cannot resolve inconsistent underlying measurements without appropriate data definitions and governance.

How enterprise teams can benchmark their own office footprint

The 56% global utilization figure provides a useful external reference, but it should not become an automatic target for an individual organization.

JLL's benchmark covers large corporate portfolios across multiple regions, with different workplace configurations and operating requirements. A single office, a smaller organization or a specialized facility may have substantially different capacity needs.

A more useful benchmarking exercise starts by establishing the organization's own measurement framework.

1. Define the utilization measure

Identify whether the metric represents occupied workstations, occupied area, building attendance or another measure of space use. Document the measurement period and the capacity used as the denominator.

External benchmarks are meaningful only when the underlying definitions are sufficiently comparable.

2. Compare average use with peak demand

Review how utilization changes throughout the week and across different working hours.

An average can conceal periods when demand approaches available capacity. A workplace with spare capacity on Fridays may still experience shortages on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

3. Separate different space types

Evaluate individual workstations, meeting rooms, collaborative areas and specialized environments separately where the available data allows.

Combining all space types into a single utilization figure can obscure areas where capacity is insufficient or where demand is consistently low.

4. Examine the target itself

Determine how the existing target was established and whether it reflects current attendance patterns, operational requirements and workplace design.

JLL's 2026 findings show that organizations can narrow their utilization gap partly by revising their targets. A target should therefore be assessed for its operational relevance, not simply retained because it was established in an earlier planning cycle.

5. Connect utilization findings to specific decisions

Different patterns of space use may support different actions.

Consistently low workstation demand could justify examining desk-sharing arrangements or alternative workplace configurations. Concentrated meeting-room demand may point toward changes in the mix of available spaces. Uneven attendance across weekdays may require a closer examination of scheduling patterns.

Where a team needs temporary capacity or wants to test a different office configuration before making a longer-term commitment, flexible workspace may be one option to evaluate alongside changes to the existing portfolio.

Any such decision should account for location, access requirements, operating costs, employee needs and the reliability of the underlying utilization data.

The central finding: utilization targets are changing alongside workplace use

JLL's 2026 benchmark shows measurable progress in global office utilization, but the narrowing gap between actual and planned use cannot be explained by rising occupancy alone.

Actual utilization increased from 54% to 56% over the previous year, while the implied target declined from approximately 79% to 74%. The resulting 18-point gap reflects both developments.

For enterprise real estate teams, the distinction is important. Improving utilization is not simply a matter of bringing more employees into the office or reducing available space until a target is reached.

It requires understanding how different environments are used, when demand is concentrated and whether planning assumptions reflect the organization's actual operating needs.

The most useful outcome of benchmarking is therefore not matching an external percentage. It is developing a more reliable basis for deciding how much space the organization needs and how that space should function.