As Americans Work From Home, Europeans and Asians Head Back to the Office

While U.S. offices are half empty three years into the Covid-19 pandemic, workplaces in Europe and Asia are bustling again.

Americans have embraced remote work and turned their backs on offices with greater regularity than their counterparts overseas. U.S. office occupancy stands at 40% to 60% of prepandemic levels, varying within that range by month and by city. That compares with a 70%-to-90% rate in Europe and the Middle East, according to JLL, a property-services firm that manages 4.6 billion square feet of real estate globally.

Return to office was even more common in Asia, JLL said, where rates ranged from 80% to 110%—meaning that in some cities more people are in the office nowadays than before the pandemic.

Bigger homes, longer commutes and a tighter labor market help explain why Americans spend less time in the office than Europeans and Asians, workplace consultants say.

This divergence in return-to-office habits not only benefits overseas landlords more than their U.S. peers. It has a direct impact on how quickly metro areas rebound from the pandemic’s economic shock. Cities in Europe and Asia have bounced back relatively well. But empty office buildings and missing commuters have undermined recoveries in U.S. cities such as New York and San Francisco, where local restaurants, shops and other businesses that rely on office workers as their primary customers have suffered.

The number of unemployed in New York City increased by 83,500 between early 2020 and the third quarter of 2022 as the city’s unemployment rate surged far above the national average, according to a report by the New School Center for New York City Affairs. Many of those who lost their jobs worked in Manhattan in face-to-face industries such as retail, accommodation and food services.

While Manhattan has been particularly hard hit because of its dependence on office commuters, other U.S. central business districts are also struggling. Falling office values are threatening to hit city budgets that depend on property taxes. Lower transit ridership is weighing on the finances of public-transportation authorities. Adding more apartments can help revitalise central business districts, but that will take time.

Several overseas capitals experienced periods where more than 75% of their workers were back at their desks in 2021 and 2022, JLL said. That includes Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore in Asia. Paris regularly topped the list of workers back in the office in Europe. Stockholm wasn’t far behind with several months at a more-than-75% return-to-office rate.

No major U.S. city tracked by JLL achieved that high a return rate during the period.

“The U.S. has borne the brunt of this,” said Phil Ryan, director of city futures at JLL.

Living arrangements are one reason for the difference in work habits. Americans are more likely to live in spacious suburban houses. That makes it easier to set up a home office away from distractions. Hong Kong’s small apartments, for example, often house multiple generations, making working from home less appealing.

Suburban sprawl means many Americans have longer, more tedious commutes plagued by worsening traffic jams—another reason to stay home. While a number of European cities also have long average commutes, New York and Chicago are unmatched, according to mobility-services company Moovit Inc. Public-transit systems in Europe and Asia are often more reliable and less prone to delays, making it easier to get to work.

“We have high-density cities with effective public-transport systems,” said Caroline Pontifex, London-based director of workplace experience at consulting firm KKS Savills. “That makes a difference.”

Another explanation for America’s office exceptionalism is its labor market. At 3.4%, the U.S. unemployment rate is barely more than half the European Union’s unemployment rate of 6.1%. While Europe is also facing labor shortages, U.S. companies have been particularly hard hit, said JLL’s Mr. Ryan.

That has forced them to look farther afield for employees and hire remotely. Tech firms, which account for a particularly high share of employment in some big U.S. cities, have long been more tolerant of remote work.

Co-working companies are also reporting lower occupancy in some U.S. cities. WeWork Inc. said 72% of its desks in New York were leased as of the fourth quarter of 2022, compared with 80% in Paris, 81% in London and 82% in Singapore.

Workplace consultants say they expect the office-use gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world to persist.

It doesn’t help that U.S. offices were emptier long before the pandemic. A construction glut led to high vacancy rates, and even within leased offices companies tended to put fewer people on each floor than their European and Asian peers.

All that empty space is now creating a negative reinforcing cycle, said Phil Kirschner, an associate partner at business consulting company McKinsey & Co. Americans sitting in big, mostly empty offices find the experience depressing, making them more likely to stay at home in the first place. “It feels less energetic,” he said.

On Bastille Day, the scent of toasted bread, melting cheese, crêpes and velouté filled a heritage warehouse in Sydney’s Darlinghurst.

Inside Prim Haus, rooms had been transformed into an elegant interpretation of a contemporary French home. Cookware hung alongside market produce, appliances were placed within carefully composed domestic settings and live kitchens turned out French comfort food throughout the afternoon.

The occasion was La Maison de Tefal, an immersive celebration marking 70 years since a French engineer introduced an invention that would fundamentally change home cooking.

Tefal’s story began in 1956 with the commercial launch of what the company describes as the world’s first non-stick frying pan. Seven decades later, the business operates across cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care in more than 120 countries.

The scale of the modern brand is considerable, but its origins were remarkably domestic.

The invention that started in a French kitchen

In the early 1950s, French engineer Marc Grégoire began experimenting with polytetrafluoroethylene, better known as PTFE, after discovering its unusually effective non-stick properties.

The material was already known within industrial applications. Grégoire’s important contribution was developing a way to bond it securely to an aluminium disc.

According to the company’s history, a conversation with his wife inspired him to apply the process to cookware. The resulting pan allowed meat and eggs to be cooked using less fat, while making the surface considerably easier to clean.

Grégoire patented his non-stick frying-pan concept in 1954 and began selling the finished product in 1956. The new company’s name combined the French words for the two defining materials: Téflon and aluminium.

The attraction was immediate. This was innovation expressed through a simple, recognisable household problem. Food stuck to pans; the new Tefal pan was designed so it would not.

The idea quickly travelled beyond France. Tefal entered the United States in 1961, the same year the company established the production site at Rumilly, near the French Alps. Rumilly would become the centre of Tefal’s cookware expertise and develop an identity as the “frying pan capital of the world”.

The company says more than 35 million cookware items were manufactured at the Rumilly site in 2022. A local museum holds the 500 millionth pan produced by the factory, which came off the line in March 1994.

A Parisian home in the heart of Sydney

La Maison de Tefal translated that industrial history into a more intimate experience.

Held on 14 July, the anniversary used Bastille Day as both a cultural reference and a reminder that Tefal’s identity remains closely connected to French design and engineering.

Prim Haus was arranged as a sequence of domestic environments rather than a conventional product showroom. Guests moved through spaces devoted to cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care, with each collection presented within the rhythm of a modern home.

A French-market-inspired cooking area formed the social centre of the event. Live stations served croque-monsieur, crêpes and butternut velouté, demonstrating the products through food rather than static displays.

That distinction matters. Tefal’s most successful products have generally been those whose benefit can be understood almost immediately: a pan that releases food, a removable handle that saves cupboard space, an indicator showing when cookware has reached the correct temperature, or an appliance that automates part of a familiar cooking process.

Interactive demonstrations allowed guests to handle the products and see those functions in context. Heritage installations traced the brand’s development, while previews of newer releases connected its first frying pan with the much broader contemporary range.

The anniversary concluded with a champagne toast — an appropriately French punctuation mark for a company whose products have found their way into kitchens around the world.

Seventy years of practical invention

The non-stick frying pan established the operating principle Tefal continues to follow: find an everyday source of friction and develop a practical way to reduce it.

In 1996, the company introduced Ingenio, a modular cookware system built around removable handles. Pans could be stacked more efficiently and moved from cooktop to oven, table and refrigerator without the fixed handle of conventional cookware.

The concept anticipated the pressures that would reshape urban kitchens. As apartments became more compact and storage more valuable, cookware needed to occupy less room and serve more than one function.

Around the beginning of the following decade, Tefal introduced its heat-indicator technology, now known as Thermo-Signal. The circular marker changes appearance when the pan reaches its recommended cooking temperature, turning a technical question into a visual prompt.

In 2006, Tefal expanded the possibilities of countertop cooking with ActiFry. The appliance circulated hot air around food and used little or no added oil, helping establish a product category that would eventually become one of the most competitive areas of the global appliance market.

Innovation also moved beyond cooking. The Freemove cordless steam iron arrived in 2012, removing the cord from the active ironing movement while retaining a powered base.

The company’s current portfolio now extends across multicookers, grills, air fryers, blenders, ice-cream makers, garment steamers, irons and floor-care products. Although the categories are diverse, the common proposition remains convenience grounded in engineering.

The next generation of non-stick cookware

For its 70th year, Tefal has returned to the product that created the brand.

The new Excellence+ cookware range introduces what the company calls FusionCore technology. Tefal describes it as its most durable non-stick coating to date, designed to withstand intensive use and scratching.

As with any durability claim, consumers should follow the manufacturer’s care instructions and consider the applicable warranty rather than interpreting promotional language as a guarantee against every form of damage. But the focus on longer-lasting coatings reflects an important change in buyer expectations.

Convenience is no longer enough on its own. Modern households are increasingly concerned with how long products remain useful, whether they can be repaired and what happens when they reach the end of their working life.

Tefal has responded in several ways. Its Renew cookware uses recycled aluminium and a ceramic non-stick coating, while Groupe SEB has expanded cookware recycling initiatives in international markets. For many small domestic appliances, the group also promotes a 15-year repairability commitment based on parts availability and access to authorised repairers.

The details and warranty periods vary by product and country, so Australian buyers should check the conditions attached to an individual appliance. Nevertheless, repairability represents a meaningful shift from the assumption that a failed countertop appliance should simply be discarded.

From French manufacturer to global household group

Tefal joined Groupe SEB in 1968, giving the company greater international distribution and the resources to expand beyond cookware.

Founded in 1857 and headquartered in France, Groupe SEB has grown into a global small-appliance and cookware business with more than 30 brands. Its portfolio includes All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Lagostina and WMF, with operations extending across more than 150 countries.

Within that group, Tefal remains one of the flagship names — and one of the clearest examples of how a single invention can become the foundation for an international consumer brand.

Its longevity has not come from making everyday objects more complicated. The strongest Tefal products do the opposite. They take a small uncertainty, inconvenience or frustration and design it out of the task.

That was the value of Marc Grégoire’s original frying pan. It did not ask people to change what they cooked. It made the existing process easier, more predictable and less difficult to clean afterwards.

Seventy years later, that deceptively modest principle continues to guide the company.

La Maison de Tefal celebrated the products, the French heritage and the anniversary itself. Yet the larger story was visible at every cooking station and demonstration: innovation becomes lasting only when people can use it without having to think about the technology underneath.

For Tefal, the next 70 years will be shaped by new materials, smarter appliances, changing homes and greater expectations around durability. Its challenge will be to keep evolving without losing sight of the insight that started everything — that the most valuable household inventions often solve the most ordinary problems.

Tefal at a glance

Founded: France, 1956
Founder: Engineer Marc Grégoire
Original innovation: Commercialisation of the first non-stick frying pan
Manufacturing heritage: Rumilly, France
Notable innovations: Ingenio, Thermo-Signal, ActiFry and Freemove
Latest cookware development: Excellence+ with FusionCore technology
Parent company: Groupe SEB
International presence: More than 120 countries
Australian website: Tefal Australia