The pandemic altered the way people work, spend and pay by keeping them teleworking from home and shopping online. Now the workforce landscape is undergoing yet another transformation as more companies summon employees back to physical offices. While remote work dominated at the height of COVID-19 when half of all workers, according to PYMNTS Intelligence data, labored from home, that number has significantly decreased. As of early 2025, 63% of workers who were once remote are now back in the office. Some 8 in 10 employed consumers currently split their time between a formal office and home office in a hybrid arrangement or are fully in-office.
This return-to-office movement affects consumer behavior in multiple ways. Consumers who have returned to office environments after working remotely have readapted their behavior to look like that of those working full time in-office. They are adjusting their daily routines to accommodate commutes, office-based work hours and altered social patterns built on in-person connections. These changes are most visible in three key areas: grocery shopping on weekends instead of weekdays, purchases of fast-food lunches on weekdays and sign-ups for retail subscriptions.
These are just some of the findings detailed in “Consumer Spending Habits Change as Workers Return to the Office,” a PYMNTS Intelligence exclusive report. This edition examines how the return to traditional work environments is reshaping consumer spending behaviors. It draws on insights from a survey of 2,098 U.S. consumers conducted from Jan. 14 to Jan. 25.
Return to Office Is Now the Norm
Roughly 80% of employed consumers currently work in hybrid roles or full time in the office, with 63% of consumers who were remote during the pandemic called back to the formal workplace.
Returning to the office is no longer an emerging trend — it is the dominant work mode. Roughly 80% of employed consumers now work in-office or in a hybrid setting. Just 17% still perform their jobs remotely. This marks a stark decline from trends during the peak of the pandemic, when approximately 50% of employees worked from home, according to PYMNTS Intelligence data.
Amid the change, generational differences exist in employment and work arrangements. Roughly 6 in 10 consumers are currently employed. Three in 10 do not have jobs and are not actively looking for work. Millennial and Generation X consumers are the most likely to be actively working full-time. Conversely, Generation Z is struggling to break into the job market. Gen Z consumers are nearly three times more likely to be unemployed and looking for work than Gen X.
Younger consumers are also slightly more likely to work hybrid jobs. Older, more senior employees are more likely to work remotely. For example, 68% of working Gen Z consumers perform their jobs in-office, while 22% are in hybrid roles and 10% work remotely. In comparison, 65% of working baby boomers and seniors work in-office. One in 10 boomers have hybrid roles, and 24% are fully remote. These differences may be due to specific job roles, company policies or options to exercise location choices.
With 63% of former remote workers now back in an office setting, their shopping and meal consumption habits have changed. This shift affects everything from daily meal planning to long-term spending behaviors.
Quick Lunches and Weekend Chores
Employees who have returned to the office are likelier to grab a fast-food lunch on weekdays and shop for groceries on weekends.
One of the most pronounced shifts in consumer behavior due to the return-to-office mandate is how and when people shop and eat. With in-office and hybrid workers constrained by daily work hours, weekday lunch habits have shifted toward convenience, and they have pushed grocery shopping to the weekends.
Employees who have returned to the office are 60% more likely to make weekend grocery trips compared to remote employees. More than 4 in 10, or 42%, of such workers now shop for groceries on weekends, compared to 26% of those who continued working remotely after the pandemic. Conversely, remote workers are 14% more likely to purchase groceries on a weekday. This shift further indicates that the return-to-office mandate directly impacts their shopping habits.
A similar pattern is evident in restaurant purchases. In-office and hybrid workers are significantly more likely to buy restaurant meals during the week than remote workers, who favor dining out on weekends. While 29% of in-office workers typically make their restaurant purchases on weekdays, just 19% of remote workers do the same. At 36%, remote workers are the most likely to frequent restaurants on weekends, while the 1 in 4 workers who have always been working on-site (such as essential workers at grocery stores that never went remote during the pandemic) are the least likely to visit a restaurant on the weekend.
Data also shows that two-thirds of in-office workers are likely to buy food from a quick-service restaurant, compared to 56% of remote workers. Moreover, employees who returned to the office are as likely to buy food from a fast-food restaurant as those who never went remote and were always on-site. This suggests that being in the office and not at home drives spending on quick-service meals during time-limited lunch breaks.
Subscriptions as a Time-Saving Solution
Back-to-office workers emphasize the importance of saving time by using food delivery and fashion subscriptions, with many purchasing in the last six months.
As time becomes a more constrained and valuable resource for return-to-office employees, convenience-driven subscriptions are gaining traction. Workers who have returned to the office increasingly rely on food delivery services and retail subscriptions to streamline their daily lives. This trend differs sharply with remote workers, who tend to subscribe to a broader range of goods beyond meal kits and fashion services.
Roughly 15% of consumers currently have an active subscription for retail products, with back-to-office workers being 1.8 times more likely than remote workers to subscribe to services such as Amazon Subscribe and Save for toiletries, StitchFix for clothes and Hello Fresh for food.
Currently, 61% of back-to-office consumers with some type of retail subscription have food subscriptions — twice as many as remote workers. Notably, 75% of back-to-office consumers with food subscriptions signed up within the last six months. Just 51% of remote workers with food subscriptions signed up within the same period. This data indicates a strong recent shift toward convenience-based meal planning, especially for those called back to the office.
Fashion subscriptions also reflect this divide. At 42%, return-to-office workers with retail subscriptions are significantly more likely than always-in-office workers (those who never went remote, even during the pandemic) to have clothing subscription services that help them rebuild and maintain office-ready wardrobes. Just 5% of remote workers with subscriptions have such fashion-related services, reinforcing that those working from home have less need for professional attire. Moreover, 9 in 10 back-to-office consumers who get clothing subscriptions signed up for their deliveries less than six months ago.
This growing interest in both food and clothing subscriptions among return-to-work consumers suggests that companies that offer flexible subscription models while catering to shifting work patterns have an opportunity to tap into a growing market.
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Methodology
“How People Pay: Consumer Spending Habits Change as Workers Return to the Office,” a PYMNTS Intelligence exclusive report, is based on a survey of 2,098 U.S. consumers conducted from Jan. 14 to Jan. 25. This report examines how the return to traditional work environments is reshaping consumer spending behaviors. Our sample was balanced to reflect the U.S. adult population across key demographic variables: 51% of respondents identified as female, 40% reported annual incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 and 28% were millennials.
