‘Unprecedented’ theft contributed to $112 billion in retail losses last year
‘Unprecedented’ theft contributed to $112 billion in retail losses last year
Summary: There is a normal percentage of theft compared to previous years, but because of inflation the estimated dollar amounts are “unprecedented.” Please don’t ask about the unprecedented profits.
Clickbait headline articles need to be shocking sounding. Bonus points if they push the narrative that companies are good and us horrible peasant thieves stealing from them are bad.
It’s worth noting that when retail sales go up, as they did in 2022, shrink also tends to rise. The average shrink rate in the 2022 fiscal year was 1.6%, up from 1.4% the year before. The latest figure is in line with shrink rates from 2019 and 2020.
wages don't keep pace with inflation, so the difference won't be as dramatic.
Just a correction: wage theft accounted for up to $50 billion in 2014 according to the EPI, not 2017. That would be roughly $65 billion today. Like you, I would also like to see more recent numbers.
I’ll bet these companies throw everything under the sun into the theft bucket. That includes internal mishandling of inventory. They then exaggerate the costs for insurance claims. 
oh well. fuck the corpos
Maybe they can all go to an instacart model or something like Amazons auto checkout model. Or just have actual cashiers. Maybe everything is in vending machines. Idk, but the current experience in retail mostly is horrible and I want to avoid it if at all possible.
Or just have actual cashiers.
Fake news lol
But even if true... Nobody cares about corps losing some profits.
get some cashiers!
Apples and oranges. If you are a cashier and theft occurs you aren't paid enough to risk anything, including your life, to stop theft. Companies can hire more asset protection people.
In Canada off-duty cops do that job AND get those hours added onto their retirement fund ... that we taxpayers pay for.
#ACAB
What? I like using self-checkout.
3 and 4 in this article with sources. https://dealaid.org/data/self-checkout/
aka skip scanning
Stealing from corporations is always reclamation.
Every profit they make is them getting extra for doing nothing extra.
Fuck them.
Also, all of these companies have theft insurance.
More than I would expect.
Inflation will do that. As BeefPiano put it,
In 2017 shrinkage accounted for $42 Billion, or 1.85% of sales.
that shows how crazy inflation is - $42 Billion was 1.85% then and $113 Billion is 1.6% now.
Exactly right. No amount of loss prevention investment will make up for a broken and damaged economy.
Cool. Let's see the wage theft stat now.
The EPI estimated about $50 billion per year in wage theft back in 2014 which would equate to about $65 billion today. It could also have changed a bit since then.
https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-50-billion/
The EPI is fairly leftist economically so make a mental note of that when reading it.
Let's run those numbers again but pretend wages have kept up with inflation. Bet it's higher.