“The lunch rush is dead” | Why HR should be concerned about the decline of the great American lunch hour

“The lunch rush is dead.”

So says an NBC article released earlier this week based on data shared by Square.

According to the figures, employees just aren’t spending as much during their weekday lunch hours. Square says the volume of transactions Monday through Friday has dropped 3.3% compared to 2019.

What gives? Well, through a combination of tighter budgets amid a cost-of-living squeeze, a drop in the amount of in-office work, and bigger and busier workloads than ever, workers appear to be ditching their historic lunchbreaks in favor of greater spending on the weekend.