‘Unprecedented’ theft contributed to $112 billion in retail losses last year
‘Unprecedented’ theft contributed to $112 billion in retail losses last year
Retailers say they’re seeing theft and crime soar in their stores, prompting them to rethink how they operate, according to a new survey.
Cool. Let's see the wage theft stat now.
109The 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.
17Let's run those numbers again but pretend wages have kept up with inflation. Bet it's higher.
18
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.
101Clickbait 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.
1
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.
In 2017 shrinkage accounted for $42 Billion, or 1.85%.. First off, that shows how crazy inflation is - $42 Billion was 1.85% then and $113 Billion is 1.6% now.
The other thing is that in 2017, wage theft accounted for $50 Billion in losses from workers. I would like to see how 2022’s wage theft numbers stack up against the shrinkage numbers.
54Just 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.
6
I haven't shoplifted since I was a teenager.
But seeing the price of some of my groceries jump 30-80% compared to pre-Covid makes it fucking tempting.
41That's what should have been paid out to employees, then you wouldn't have this problem
36I’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. 
35oh well. fuck the corpos
13Maybe 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.
13Or just have actual cashiers.
13
get some cashiers!
9Apples 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.
8In Canada off-duty cops do that job AND get those hours added onto their retirement fund ... that we taxpayers pay for.
#ACAB
2
What? I like using self-checkout.
-13 and 4 in this article with sources. https://dealaid.org/data/self-checkout/
aka skip scanning
1
This should be in upliftingnews.
7Stealing 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.
4More than I would expect.
-4Permanently Deleted
-5Inflation 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.
5Exactly right. No amount of loss prevention investment will make up for a broken and damaged economy.
3