Office vacancies in U.S. downtowns increased to 12.5 percent in the first quarter, the highest in three years, as companies cut jobs and new buildings came onto the market, Cushman & Wakefield said.
The national office-vacancy rate climbed from 11.2 percent in the fourth quarter and 9.9 percent a year earlier, the New York-based property broker said Thursday in a statement. The amount of newly leased space fell 39 percent from a year earlier to 10.6 million square feet, Cushman said.
U.S. employers fired more than 650,000 workers during each of the past four months, pushing the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since 1983, according to the Labor Department. The first-quarter vacancy rate was the highest since the first three months of 2006, when it was 12.6 percent.
