Amazon’s return to office is increasing Seattle foot traffic

In the first month of Amazon’s five-day return-to-office mandate, downtown Seattle buzzed with more workers and visitors.

As the city’s largest employer brought workers back full time for the first time since 2020, the downtown area inched closer to prepandemic norms last month, according to data released Friday from the nonprofit Downtown Seattle Association. 

In January, downtown Seattle recorded the second-highest daily average for weekday worker foot traffic since March 2020. It also saw 2 million unique visitors on its sidewalks last month. That represents 94% of the visitors downtown Seattle saw in January 2019, the DSA found.  

The numbers reflect “Amazon’s significant employment downtown,” said Jon Scholes, the president of the DSA. “When they make a decision, others feel it in really positive ways.”

Amazon required employees to work from the office five days a week starting Jan. 2, a change from the company’s three-day in-office mandate that had been in effect since May 2023. 

Amazon said the change was meant to foster collaboration and innovation as workers were able to meet for serendipitous conversations and brainstorms. But some workers pushed back on the decision, arguing that it would hinder productivity and disproportionately affect some workers who needed the flexibility of remote work for things like caregiving responsibilities. Workers also accused the company of failing to provide data to back up its decision.  

In a statement Friday, Amazon said “we’re excited by the innovation, collaboration and connection we’ve seen already with our teams working in person together.” 

DSA data shows that Amazon workers are in fact heading back to the office. The data is provided by Placer.ai, a location analytics firm, and is based on cellphone location information.

Average worker foot traffic around Amazon’s Seattle campus for weekdays in January 2025 reached 74% of January 2019 norms. January 2024’s average was 62% of the 2019 levels.

In South Lake Union and the Denny Triangle area, the site of Amazon’s Seattle office buildings, there was a daily average of 46,000 workers in January, excluding two federal holidays. That’s an increase of about 20% from the same month a year earlier, when foot traffic in those neighborhoods averaged 38,000 workers per day. 

Amazon has about 50,000 workers based in Seattle, as well as 14,000 in Bellevue and 2,000 in Redmond. The company considers all three as part of its Puget Sound HQ1. It has a second headquarters in Arlington, Va., where it employs about 8,000 people.

Beyond the South Lake Union and Denny Triangle neighborhoods, worker foot traffic in all of downtown Seattle increased 9% last month compared with a year earlier and reached 57% of the January 2019 average.

Excluding the holidays, average daily foot traffic was about 95,000 workers, the second-highest average since March 2020. June 2024 saw a higher average, but the DSA attributed that to a seasonal uptick in activity during the summer months. 

Scholes said Amazon’s return has been a boon for downtown Seattle. As the city’s largest employer, its mandate instantly brought more people to shop and dine around South Lake Union, the Denny Triangle and surrounding neighborhoods. 

Amazon’s three-day requirement in 2023 boosted foot traffic as well, but the DSA and other business advocates said there was room for improvement. 

Now, “I think we’re seeing people get reacquainted with the reasons they liked working downtown prepandemic,” Scholes said.

He expects to continue seeing an uptick in foot traffic over the course of the year as more companies follow Amazon’s lead and the weather warms up. January and February are historically quiet months in Seattle, Scholes said, calling it the “cocooning effect.” And this year’s snowy conditions may have kept even more people at home than usual. 

By March, Scholes expects foot traffic could reach 60% of January 2019 levels. By summer, it could reach two-thirds of prepandemic norms. 

In the future, Seattle’s waterfront renovation, new public transit options and World Cup soccer games in 2026 will continue pushing more visits, Scholes said. 

Already, demand for hotel rooms increased 5% year over year, recording 241,000 hotel room sales in January, the DSA found. That’s 85% of the hotel room demand Seattle recorded in January 2019. 

The number of occupied apartment units downtown increased 4% in January compared to the first quarter last year, to 59,000 units, according to data compiled by CoStar and provided by the DSA. 

Worker foot traffic has been lower Mondays and Fridays than days in the middle of week in recent years, according to the DSA. In January, worker foot traffic on what had been the slowest days of the week increased 22% compared with December 2024 and 36% compared with the start of 2024.