Now examine the $94.5 billion number, is that even a real number?
The stat I always heard is the vast majority of shrink is from employees.
My understanding is that shrink includes all losses. So it’s retail and employee theft yes, but it also includes things that get written off like spoiled and outdated food, broken merchandise, vendor fraud, ticketing and PoS errors (like putting the wrong price into the computer), over h ordering items and having to sell them for less than anticipated to clear them out.
So “shrink” is all the things that happen to stock that make it worth less than expected. But you’re not going to blame yourself or your vendors, so blame the customer instead!
It’s likely real, and yes, it’s from employees trying to make ends meet: the main theft happening in stores is wage theft by the employers.
where did you get that from? I read the whole article and didn’t see any claims of employee theft. The issue is that they were looking at total 2015 shrinkage numbers across the industry and misrepresenting those numbers as a percentage of thefts (37-50%)
Wage theft is perennially much larger than shoplifting.
I was referring to OP claim the shrinkage was actually employees stealing to “make ends meet”.
We all know that retail workers are underpaid. And it’s pretty widely known that the biggest source of shrinkage is employees. Thought this was just common knowledge
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A national lobbying group has retracted its startling estimate that “organized retail crime” was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021, a figure that helped amplify claims that the United States was experiencing a nationwide wave of shoplifting.
The retraction comes as retail chains like Target continue to claim that they are the victims of large shoplifting operations that have cut into profits, forcing them to close stores or inconvenience customers by locking products away.
The claims have been fueled by widely shared videos of a few instances of brazen shoplifters, including images of masked groups smashing windows and grabbing high-end purses and cellphones.
At issue is “total annual shrink” — the industry term for the value of merchandise that disappears from stores without being paid for, through theft, damage and inventory tracking mistakes.
The company’s decision had come months after a video seen millions of times showed a man, garbage bag in hand, openly stealing products from a Walgreens as others watched.
Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California, responded to reports of large-scale thefts in the state with a call for tough prosecution of shoplifters and a plan to invest millions of dollars to fight “organized retail theft.” Gov.
The original article contains 1,044 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
