With omicron cases falling sharply again and large sections of the workforce vaccinated and boosted, banks like Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are once again beginning to lure more employees back to the Manhattan office towers.

After numerous false starts in the last two years, the hope is that a relapse to working from home can be avoided this time.

"Barring another variant or another setback in the pandemic, late March could be a real tipping point," said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City lobby group.

"Employers are looking to get their employees back into the office, at least those who have a strong office culture."

Who will bring the employees back and when?

Citigroup asked its employees in the New York City area to return to the office this Monday.

At JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp.

The number of attendees has steadily increased over the past few weeks.

For American Express Co., March 1 is the deadline, after multiple postponements throughout the fall and winter.

Wells Fargo & Co. now plans to bring its employees back into the office in mid-March.

The financial industry is more focused on bringing workers back than other industries in the US, especially when compared to tech companies, where many workers continue to insist on working from home for part or all of the workweek.

However, this has forced banks to commit to more flexibility going forward to avoid losing top talent.

"As a society, we will find a way to live with the virus, aided by the effectiveness of vaccines and new treatments," Goldman CEO David Solomon said last month.

"For us, this means that we adapt our processes flexibly and dynamically to the new situation, while at the same time enabling the majority of employees to return to the office safely."

Many offices in New York

New York is more dependent on the return of office workers than virtually any other city in the US.

The east coast metropolis has more than 10 percent of the entire office stock in the country and some skyscrapers - like the Empire State Building - even have their own zip code.

Countless small businesses serve the needs of commuters and office workers.

Office attendance, which had fallen to about 10 percent at the end of December, has slowly increased back to around a quarter, according to data from security firm Kastle Systems.

More than 60 percent of Manhattan employers expect more than 50 percent of the workforce to be back in the office by the end of the quarter.

The German financial institutions are still a long way from the falling number of cases in New York and relaxation of the pandemic measures such as an early end to the mask requirement.

In Germany, Omikron has brought more employees back to the home office since the beginning of the year and a trend reversal is still a long way off.