Somewhere in your building right now, there’s a utilization number sitting on a dashboard—forty-two percent, maybe fifty-five—and whoever’s looking at it is probably asking the wrong question. Not “is this accurate?” but “is this normal?”
Before comparing that number to a market average, it’s worth asking something more basic: how confident are you in the number itself? Tango surveyed real estate leaders at 25 global enterprises for the 2025 Enterprise Occupancy Tracking Report, and the findings suggest that for most organizations, the honest answer is “not very.”
This post covers where the market benchmarks currently stand, then digs into why so many organizations (including large, well-resourced ones) struggle to produce a number worth benchmarking in the first place.
Where the market benchmarks stand right now
Global utilization has been climbing off its post-pandemic floor. CBRE put whole-building utilization at roughly 53 percent in 2026, and JLL’s figure landed close behind at 56 percent, both up substantially from the 35 to 38 percent range organizations were seeing in 2023 and 2024. Separately, a 2026 workplace benchmark study from Spacewell—built on sensor data across more than 200 buildings—put average occupancy closer to 45 percent, a reminder that different methodologies produce different numbers even when they’re measuring the same underlying shift.
JLL’s benchmark also breaks out specialized and technical spaces running at roughly 45 percent utilization against a 72 percent target—one of the clearer signs of oversupply hiding inside an otherwise normal-looking portfolio number. The direction across all of these is the same: utilization is recovering, but toward a lower, more variable baseline than pre-2020 norms, not back toward them.
Those are useful reference points. But a reference point is only as useful as your ability to compare your own number to it fairly, and that’s where most organizations run into trouble.
Why your own number is harder to trust than it looks
Before asking whether your utilization rate is normal, ask whether it’s complete. Sixty percent of the enterprises Tango surveyed track occupancy in less than 75 percent of their building portfolio, and not a single firm in the study had full coverage, despite all of them generating at least $1 billion in annual revenue. Cost was the reason most commonly given. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same: for every untracked building, there’s no number to benchmark in the first place.
Coverage is only half of it. The method behind the number matters just as much: 76 percent of firms rely on badge data, but just one in five use it alone, and no firm in the study used sensors as its only source. Badge swipes, reservations, and sensors each measure something different (building entries, intended use, and actual presence) so two organizations citing the “same” utilization rate may not be describing the same thing at all. (For a closer look at how enterprise portfolios handle this, see How Leading Firms Track Occupancy in the Workplace.)
That inconsistency is also why confidence stays low even at firms with real infrastructure already in place: 64 percent call their own tracking “fairly mature,” but none rated themselves “very mature,” and having more data sources didn’t change that—one firm running four separate tracking methods still rated itself at the bottom tier. We covered why in Occupancy Tracking Maturity: most organizations have enough data to go further tan basic space counts and simply aren’t using it that way yet.
What this means for how you use a benchmark
None of this makes benchmarks useless. It just means they come with a caveat most published figures skip. Before comparing your number to the market:
- Check your own coverage first. A portfolio-wide average built on 60 percent of your buildings is a different number than one built on all of them.
- Know what’s generating your number. Badge-only data, reservation data, and sensor data will each produce a different utilization figure for the exact same building.
- Match methods, not just numbers. If a published benchmark doesn’t disclose its measurement method, treat it as directional rather than a direct comparison for your own space planning decisions.
Used this way, a benchmark works as a sanity check: whether your number lands in a plausible range, not a pass-or-fail grade.
Build a number you can trust
Closing this gap usually has less to do with buying more tracking technology than with connecting what you already have. Tango Space brings whatever occupancy data you’re already collecting—badge, reservation, or sensor—into one system for scenario planning and space management, so the gaps between sources stop being blind spots. For broader coverage without new hardware, Tango Occupancy uses your existing network infrastructure to extend visibility into the buildings your other tools don’t reach.
Want to see what full visibility into your portfolio looks like? Schedule a demo.
