Shoplifting happens 93% more often now or is the statistic that the value of stolen goods increased by 93% in total? I feel like that matters a lot.
Edit: the article quite well written if you ask me, but lacks sources. There is a graph, but that doesn’t show the numbers mentioned. It shows losses of 31.1B in 2019 and an estimated 47.8B in 2025, which is a rise of ~54% not 93%. It presents itself as investigative journalism, but feels more like a op-ed instead.
I started reading it but am out of time for now. I’m fairly sure that the 93% number is number of known shoplifting incidents and is unrelated to the value of the items. I’d need to read more to be sure.
I do wonder whether the dollar numbers are inflation adjusted or not. I’m sure that info is in the report.
Thanks, I continued looking further into it as well and found another article on it, which states:
Retailers reported a 93% increase in annual shoplifting incidents in 2023 compared to 2019.
So I believe you are right. Guess op proves that often you can have either interesting text with poorly supported numbers, or boring text with well supported facts. Too bad though, cause i did actually enjoy reading the article (so extra shout-out to op for sharing).
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An increase in the number of known shoplifting incidents would be conflated with increasing surveillance. It would be hard to distinguish observability vs actual increases.
I feel like they would still know about it when doing inventory, no?
Inventory would measure $ worth of goods missing, but wouldn’t ascertain the number of incidents that caused those losses. So the $/incident and incident count figures should be treated as if they have high uncertainty even if the $ figure is accurate.
Remember during the pandemic, when they kept bitching about the incredible wave of shoplifting going on, and it turned out that what they were actually bitching about was “shrink”. The thing is that shrink refers to loss of inventory from all causes.
So yes, it includes shoplifting. It also includes spoilage, like if you over-order something and you can’t sell it all before it spoils (management error). Or you order something and it arrives late (supply chain issues during the pandemic, tarriff and ensuing port-clearance issues these days (especially with cuts to government staff)) and you can no longer sell your spooky"Happy Halloween" merchandise/candy for full price in November. It includes employee theft and vendor fraud, administrative error and return fraud, inefficient processes and a poor economy. It’s the difference between optimal sales during a period, and actual sales excluding items that can be carried over to next period. Like, if I don’t sell enough tvs, I can carry that over to next quarter, but I can’t do the same thing with lettuce and tomatoes.
And I can’t help but wonder if this is the same thing happening again. Yes, there’s an increase in shrink, but how much of it is actually shoplifting, and how much of it is due to tariffs and shipping difficulties, managers having ordered products for the economy they expect to have vs the one we actually have. Like, maybe prior can’t afford your organically-grown arugula and bought plain lettuce instead - or just stopped buying short-lived leafy green stuff because they can’t afford it Just because you didn’t get the sales you wanted doesn’t mean the entire difference disappeared into shoplifting - but admitting that would admit that you’re not a perfect manager, and that would threaten your bonus, so shoplifting it is!
It is, see my other comment.
These figures are always contorted. I don’t believe for a second 45% of shoppers are stealing food.
You didn’t even read the simplest part of the graph? “45% of shoplifters”, FFS. 🤦🏽♂️
These stats come out of an industry that knowingly lied to get more more press and lobbying for arresting shoplifters by just outright saying that all lost products were attributed to shoplifting when in reality its a small percent of those.
It may be 45% of their ‘losses from shoplifting’ are food but ‘45% of shoplifters’ is an unknowable number They can project that based on caught shoplifters but even those caught are likely to have lifted certain things security is watching for. Putting an unknowable piece of info in the title is a good indicator the article is likely based on a lot of faulty assumptions.
This is not untrue, but your syntactical error is not semantics.
The specific metric cited is “retail revenue loss” given in dollar amounts. The “since 2019” is doing some heavy lifting. Q1 2020 was a historic dip in Retail sales. Retail revenue has increased by ~82% since then leaving only 11% of that 93% variability unaccounted for which covers operational inefficiencies, theft, food waste, fuel mismanagement, inventory errors, fraud, etc.
The source is the US census bureau and the National Retail Federation who has a vested interest in blaming all shrinkage as the result of outside forces.
Sure, there’s some truth there and as people get more desperate they will certaintly act like it, but this framing is at least 80% bullshit and using that as a starting point means any conclusions drawn from it will be even more bullshit.
Shoplifting isn’t the problem, retail stores are big mad they’re reaching hard limits on what they can/are allowed to extract from society and are using this talking point to push for more authoritarian power grabbing. Can we stop repeating and reinforcing it?
Can we start fucking nationalizing these demonic companies that exist only to impoverish the common people? Make every organization that is necessary for the functioning of society ACCOUNTABLE to society. DIRECTLY.
That number is going to skyrocket this month without SNAP.
I didn’t see nothing.
Neither did you.
Remember folks, if you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t. Just go about your day.
What do you mean I think shoplifting is a myth I’ve never seen it?
This doesn’t appear normalized to cost increases, which might outpace the rate, which means theft is down. I seriously doubt half of all people are stealing food.
45% of shoplifters steal food, not shoppers. I would guess the others are taking clothes, jewelry, electronics, etc.
Ah sure, but are they just counting that 45% of stolen goods are food items, or 45% are only stealing food, and if so, how can they know that? What was the percent previously?
How high are you?
With how omnipresent self checkouts have become, I wouldn’t be surprised if a good chunk of customers have accidentally stolen something at least once a year.
Maybe if we consider accidents. I don’t really understand how they can even measure this in the first place, maybe a poll but that’s very unreliable methodology and sample monitoring would need a crazy large N.
It’s probably just based off of normal shrinkage metrics that stores already collect anyway. If you could get target, Walmart, and Costco to give you their data, that’d be thousands of stores.
I mean they can tell you item counts missing and total value, but how are they counting percentage of patrons? Unless you are extrapolating from catching people and assuming some likelihood of being caught…
Idk man, I’m just spit balling.
Oop I meant they are not you are, but yeah, who knows
If you see someone shoplifting food,
no you didn’tyou have a moral obligation to create a distraction.CMV: A rise in food theft is a failing of the government, not the individual, and it’s the government that should be punished.
I mean it’s the main premise of one of the most popular musicals - Les Miserables.
This article smells strongly of ChatGPT output, and cites no sources aside from gesturing vaguely at NRF. Sharing it is a disservice.
Gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat. Otherwise we’d get along.
If you see someone stealing food, you have not seen anything.
Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
