Companies looking to trim the fat are looking to people’s workspaces, according to a new report, leading to a decline in in personal space and privacy at work, even among some corporate employees used to spacious offices.
“Every client we talk to, they’re using less space per person,” Kenneth McCarthy, an economist at the commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield, told the New York Times.
The average space per North American worker in 2012 was 176 square feet, down from 225 in 2010, according to commercial real estate association CoreNetGlobal, and it’s expected to drop to 151 square feet in 2017.
Read next: How to Deal When Your Company Moves to an Open Floor Plan
More Must-Read Stories From TIME
- How to Help Victims of the Texas School Shooting
- TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2022
- What the Buffalo Tragedy Has to Do With the Effort to Overturn Roe
- Column: The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn't Have to Be That Way
- N.Y. Will Soon Require Businesses to Post Salaries in Job Listings. Here's What Happened When Colorado Did It
- The 46 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2022
- ‘We Are in a Moment of Reckoning.’ Amanda Nguyen on Taking the Fight for Sexual Violence Survivors to the U.N.
Read More From TIME