A company in Midtown might have staffers from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk, Bergen, Essex, Morris and Monmouth counties.
For them to all get to a New Jersey office would be difficult without paying for relocation. Relocation is often impractical because many workers might have mortgages under 4% and even under 3%.
Larger companies often have branch offices in NJ and Westchester already. Now that we’ve learned how to work from home, working out of a branch office is easy to set up.
In my last office job, I was working with people in other states more than I worked with people in the same building. Before being employed by them, I had worked from home as a consultant for them. Commuting to the office was a waste of time and money.
In my industry, every major company with a NYC office also has an office in northern or central New Jersey (and sometimes both).