This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.
Companies looking to trim the fat are looking to people’s workspaces, according to a new report, leading to a decline in in personal space and privacy at work, even among some corporate employees used to spacious offices.
“Every client we talk to, they’re using less space per person,” Kenneth McCarthy, an economist at the commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield, told the New York Times.
The average space per North American worker in 2012 was 176 square feet, down from 225 in 2010, according to commercial real estate association CoreNetGlobal, and it’s expected to drop to 151 square feet in 2017.
