Office furniture is not a topic most people expect to be interesting. Then you start pulling the numbers, and it turns out the American workplace has been quietly running one of the strangest experiments in modern business history — and Denver is sitting right in the middle of it.
Here are nine stats we keep coming back to, and what each one actually means if you manage a facility along the Front Range.
1. The cubicle was invented in 1968 — and its inventor hated what it became
Herman Miller launched Action Office II in 1968, designed by Robert Propst as the world’s first reconfigurable open-plan system. The whole point was flexibility: walls that moved, surfaces that adapted, a workspace that could change as fast as the work did.
By 1997, Propst was watching companies pack people into fixed boxes and called it “monolithic insanity.”
The irony is that he was right the first time. Systems furniture is built to be taken apart and put back together. Most companies just never do it. They buy it once, bolt it down, and treat it like drywall.
2. Roughly 8.5 million tons of office furniture hits U.S. landfills every year
That is the EPA-sourced figure cited across the industry, and it comes with roughly $450 million in landfill tipping fees attached. Not purchase cost. Not shipping. Just the cost of throwing it away.
Put another way: companies pay a premium to buy it, then pay again to bury it.
3. Only about 0.3% of discarded furniture gets recycled
From the EPA’s most recent furniture waste data, roughly 80% of discarded furniture is landfilled and about 0.3% is recycled. For a category built almost entirely out of steel, aluminum, and laminate, that is a remarkable number.
Most of what goes in the dumpster during an office clear-out is not broken. It is simply inconvenient.
4. Dumped office assets carry the carbon footprint of millions of cars
Industry estimates put roughly 17 billion pounds of office assets into U.S. landfills annually, with associated emissions commonly compared to several million passenger vehicles on the road.
If your company has a sustainability line in its annual report, this is one of the easiest items in the building to move. Decommissioning the right way is not a feel-good exercise — it is diversion, resale, and reuse instead of a roll-off container.
5. The median office churn rate is about 45% of occupants per year
IFMA benchmarking has long put the median annual churn rate near 45% — meaning that in a typical organization, nearly half of all occupants change desks in a given year. Some organizations run well north of 100%.
Read that again. Half your floor moves every year. That is not a one-time project. That is an ongoing operation, and it is exactly what workstation reconfiguration exists to handle.
6. Each of those internal moves runs roughly $150–$275 per person
IFMA benchmarking has pegged the fully loaded cost of a churn move — IT, phones, and the physical move — in the $150 to $275 per person range.
Multiply that by 45% of a 300-person floor and you are spending real money every single year on something most companies never put in a budget line. The firms that do plan for it spend less, because the work gets batched, scheduled off-hours, and handled by a crew that has done it before.
7. Space per employee has fallen from about 165 toward a target near 132 square feet
JLL’s occupancy benchmark work shows organizations moving from roughly 165 square feet per person toward targets closer to 132. Broader 2026 planning guidance lands in the 100–150 square foot range, down from around 225 before 2020.
Here is the part that matters: the furniture in most Denver offices was specified for the old number. Eight-by-eight workstations in a building now planned at 130 square feet per head do not fit — not physically, and not financially. That gap is why reconfiguration requests have outpaced new installs for us.
8. Downtown Denver office vacancy sat at 38.6% in Q2 2026 — and finally ticked down
Downtown Denver’s overall vacancy was 38.6% in Q2 2026, down 20 basis points — the first decline since Q3 2024. Net absorption swung positive. Leasing picked up.
But it is a split market: top-tier buildings are filling while older space sits, and Lower Downtown has run just above 20% while other pockets stay far higher. Tenants are not disappearing — they are trading up and right-sizing at the same time.
Which means a lot of furniture is moving across Denver right now. Some of it is going into new space. Some of it is going into offsite storage until the next lease is signed.
9. A 25% tariff on imported upholstered furniture is still in effect in 2026
The scheduled step-up — which would have pushed cabinets and vanities from 25% to 50% and upholstered wood furniture to 30% — was delayed until 2027. The existing 25% duty on affected imports stayed put, and broader supply chain and material costs have not exactly gone backward.
For a facilities manager, the takeaway is not complicated. New furniture is not getting cheaper this year. The furniture you already own is fully paid for.
What all nine add up to
Offices are shrinking. Churn is constant. New furniture costs more. Old furniture mostly gets buried. And the systems furniture sitting in your building was engineered from day one to be taken apart and reassembled in a different shape.
The companies getting this right in Denver are not reusing furniture because they are cheap. They are reusing it because they finally started using what Propst actually designed: a system that moves.
MORE has been doing this in Denver since 1990
We install, move, reconfigure, clean, store, and decommission office furniture across Colorado and Wyoming — Herman Miller, Steelcase, Haworth, Allsteel, HON, Kimball, Teknion, and a dozen more lines, all with one crew. BBB Gold Star member since 2002.
If you are looking at a floor plan that no longer matches your headcount, we would rather help you reuse what you have than sell you a container.
Call 303.371.4049 or request a free quote.
Sources
- Herman Miller / Action Office design history; Robert Propst, 1997
- U.S. EPA furniture and office furniture waste data, as cited across the industry
- IFMA Space and Project Management Benchmarks (churn rate and per-person move cost)
- JLL occupancy benchmark reporting
- CBRE, Denver Downtown Office Figures Q2 2026
- U.S. tariff schedule updates on furniture imports, January 2026