Coworking spaces and shared offices are making a comeback after a post-pandemic slump and tensions over return-to-office mandates. As AI drives uncertainty over the future of their workforces, companies are moving to coworking to get the space they need for in-person work without the commitment.
Amazon mandated its nearly 350,000 corporate employees to fully return to office in early 2025, but the chaotic rollout left workers without enough desks or parking spaces. In August, the company signed a lease with WeWork and added 259,000 square feet at 1440 Broadway in Manhattan to its more than 300,000 square feet at the building. WeWork also operates two other Amazon offices with 702,000 square feet in Manhattan.
San Francisco-based Anthropic has employees working at a shared WeWork office in Cambridge, Mass. JPMorgan, Lyft and Pfizer are also using co-working spaces, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Coworking is entering a new era as large firms and small businesses alike are partnering with coworking companies to meet the growing need for office flexibility for businesses and workers. These offices are not the big, anti-establishment utopian workspaces companies like WeWork were known for in the 2010s. Instead, the coworking industry is focused on private office spaces for companies with sleeker, more mature designs.
The Wall Street Journal reported that co-working space in the U.S. today totals 158.3 million square feet across nearly 8,800 locations, accounting for more than 2% of office space, according to data firm Yardi. While this is lower than pre-pandemic levels, coworking space has grown by 51.7% in recent years from 115.6 million square feet in about 5,800 locations three years ago.
Post-pandemic boom
As companies solidify their in-person work schedules, coworking offices are filling the gap without the need to commit to long-term leases.
John Santora, CEO of WeWork, says the Great Recession and the global market selloff in 2015 prompted companies to rethink their office lease strategies. The pandemic cemented the shift.
When Santora took over WeWork in June 2024 after 47 years at Cushman Wakefield where he was COO, the company had just exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy after property management software firm Yardi bought a majority stake in the company. Since then, Santora has made WeWork profitable and cash flow neutral while investing more than $140 million in upgrading its spaces and technology.
The shift to coworking coincides with a record-high office real estate vacancy rate. In 2025, 85.5 million square feet of office space came up for renewal or vacancy, according to analytics firm Trepp. WeWork works with 40 of the Fortune 100 companies, and their renewed success is due in part to the need for flexible office space and clients coming back to WeWork.
“Why make that long-term commitment, especially today, when you’re not sure of how many people are coming back, right?” Santora told Fortune. “We’ll get you in 30, 60, 90 days, and you have the ability to walk away at certain points. So, you may do a one-year deal or a three-year deal with options to leave. You’re not locked in for 10 years.”
Santora gave the example of an international bank that was debating a traditional 10-year lease rebuilding a gutted office space or working with WeWork.
“It was going to take them 24 to 30 months to be in that space,” Santora said. “We signed the deal with them for 50,000 square feet in the center of London at the end of December. They will be in that space up and running in March of this year.”
Coworking is a major savings vehicle for companies. They no longer have to handle brokerage and attorney fees typical of lease negotiations or deal with construction costs and office maintenance. T-Mobile cut its real estate costs by 80% by using the flexible office space platform LiquidSpace.
In 2024, AllState moved a quarter of its 54,000 corporate employees to coworking spaces. The company cut its annual spending on corporate offices from $382 million in 2020 to $138 million that year after closing its Chicago headquarters and abandoning two-thirds of its office space.
“The transition from taxi to Uber is what’s happening from traditional office space to flexible office space right now that all your big players are starting to use it,” said Jason Anderson, president of Vast Coworking Group, which owns three flexible office space brands.
A JLL survey found almost a third of companies were using flex offices, while 42% planned to accelerate future investment. Fortune Business Insights predicts the global flexible office market will grow to $96.8 billion in 2030, up from $34.8 billion in 2023.
“The idea that your building is going to be comprised entirely of companies on 10-year leases or more has receded a bit,” said Jamie Hodari, CEO of coworking company Industrious and a senior executive at CBRE. “I think most landlords have come to say, my building is going to be a palimpsest or an ecosystem of long-term leases and flex arrangements and spec suites.”
Meeting employees’ expectations
Coworking is giving companies flexibility as they manage resistance to a full return to the office. While employers raise office expectations with increased social pressure and incentives to get more employees at their desks, shared workspaces provide an opportunity to test-run in-office work and experiment with new markets without fully committing.
Industrious offers high-end flexible workspaces for private equity firms, law firms, and Fortune 500 companies in over 85 cities globally. The company has seen major growth in regional offices of major corporations, signed new agreements in 52 locations in 2025, up from 33 in 2024, and plans to open 60 new coworking units in 2026.
“Lots of business leaders that are more obsessed with saying I need my employees to come in at least a few days a week than even before COVID,” Hodari said. “Therefore they are focused on saying, I need great offices in all 20 cities I operate in the US, not just the top two.”
About 90% of employees want some kind of in-person office experience, according to research from CIC, conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.
“The people who work in the long tail of cities— Austin, Miami, Denver, San Diego, who historically had to work in very second-tier offices—are more and more demanding that they should have a great day at work too,” Hodari said, adding that many people want an in-office experiences on par with a company’s headquarters.
Hodari pointed to Prospect Heights in Brooklyn—outside the downtown and Midtown office hubs—as an example. It’s the fourth highest-performing location of the Industrious’ 30 New York locations.
“For many people the difference between a 10 or 15 minute commute and a 45 minute commute is even greater than anyone ever thought.” he said “It’s probably the single biggest determinant of someone you know, kind of in the long run, likes their workplace or not, or whether they show up.”
For smaller companies, partnering with a coworking space is a way to provide amenities for workers, Hodari said. Industrious provides reception, building security, amenities centers, and community events for their clients, improving the employee experiences.
“I think you’ll start to see the world be split into thirds when it comes to office space,” Anderson predicted. “The other third will become completely flexible hybrid or work out of coworking spaces, which is what is fueling the big boom for flexible office space.”
