What even is work like in the summer anymore?
For many white-collar workers, the days are gone when they had clearly delineated five-day workweeks in the office interrupted by “summer Fridays” and a few weeks of vacation in July or August. That’s been replaced by year-round flexible scheduling, work from home, meeting-free Fridays, mental-health days off throughout the year, blending of work travel and vacations, overlap between vacation travel and work, and so on.
“It used to be a ‘summer Friday’ was an exceptional thing,” says Alexia Cambon, a senior director of research at Microsoft. “Now, flexibility is pretty normalized. It’s not something that you have to ask permission for. It’s not something you have to earn. It’s not something you have to get to a certain level to deserve… As a result, maybe ‘summer Fridays’ aren’t so exceptional.”
We set out to understand how these practices have reshaped what work looks like during the summer as opposed to the rest of the year. Here’s what we found:
- Office attendance drops during summer months, but it does also at other points in the year. We analyzed the past 15 months of New York City office attendance data from Kastle, a security company that tracks card swipes at offices across the country. Attendance was lower during some weeks last summer, particularly the week of July 4 and during a steady slump between the end of July and Labor Day. August 2023 had the lowest average level of attendance out of any month in the data set, at 41.6% of pre-pandemic attendance. But attendance figures for June and July hovered around the annual average of 47.6%, aside from the week of Independence Day. The summer slump was dwarfed by an even more drastic decline in office attendance during the winter months, between Thanksgiving and the first weeks of the new year. Between November 15, 2023 and January 17, 2024, average attendance was 42.7% of pre-pandemic averages.
- US workers are taking more paid time off during the summer months. Last summer, the number of workers who took vacations during the summer rebounded past pre-pandemic levels, according to the Current Population Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the summer months of June, July, and August 2023, an average of 5.4 million full-time workers reported that they missed part of their previous work week due to a vacation or personal day, a 6% increase from 5.1 million in 2019 (the full-time labor force increased just over 2% during that same time period.)
- Americans are traveling more during the summer. US Travel, an industry trade group, predicts that this year’s travel numbers will outpace that of last year’s. Josh Friedlander, US Travel’s vice president of research, points to multiple record-breaking travel days so far this summer, as measured by the number of TSA screenings, as well as surveys showing high levels of intentions to travel. It’s likely that many of these travelers will blend work and leisure during their trips—one-fourth of workers surveyed by talent-sourcing firm Howdy said they plan to take a “workcation” in 2024, and half of respondents who have a business trip in 2024 said they plan on turning their work travel into a “bleisure” trip, or blending business and leisure.
- “Summer Fridays” have become year-round flexible Fridays. Nearly one-fifth of workers report that their companies offer “summer Fridays,” where they have a shortened workday, according to a recent survey from Dayforce. But hybrid policies have given workers additional flexibility throughout the year. Since the beginning of 2022, Friday has consistently been the most popular day to work from home among hybrid workers, according to a recent update from WFH Research. In 2023, that was especially true between May and September.
Experts we spoke with say summer work practices are still evolving. But it’s clear that flexibility is important beyond summertime. For Annie Dean, global head of Team Anywhere at Atlassian, trying to pinpoint one time of year when workers most need flexibility may miss the point. She gives the example of supporting working parents: “Speak to any parents in May, in December, in September, these frenetic months when there is performance after performance, or you’re signing up everything for the new school year and handing in all the health forms, or you’re trying to get through the holidays and support all the magical creatures that exist in our children’s lives.”When it comes to crafting vacation policies, hybrid work arrangements, and outcomes-oriented performance evaluations, “it’s not about a single policy,” she says, “but a way of operating every single day.”
Read more on what research says are the best practices for flexibility, vacation, and performance policies that affect workers year-round.