Shoplifting continues to make headlines these past few years. Depending on where you get your news, it’s being reported as a growing problem or a world-ending crisis. Newly-released data shows that it’s something else altogether.
Here’s Five Fast Facts on the Shoplifting Epidemic:
- 🛍️ Whoops- In April, the National Retail Federation issued a report that said shoplifting is responsible for $94.51B (or nearly half) of all unaccounted inventory. They just revised that number (and didn’t provide a new one), admitting it was based on faulty data. Basically, retailers are making it a bigger deal than it is and they got caught.
- 👮 Up/Down - A shoplifting report published in November by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice shows things aren’t as bad as they seem. While shoplifting incidents were 16% higher than in 2019, if you exclude New York, incidents dropped 7% total in the same time period.
- 🏬 Big Ones - It gets even stranger. Shoplifting has dropped in 17 of the 24 large cities studied, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Cincinnati, and St. Louis.
- 🚓 Bigger Ones - There are still major increases, though. After New York City, Los Angeles and Virginia Beach have the second- and third-largest gains.
- 🛒 Felonius - There’s one more important bit to consider. The number of shoplifting incidents categorized as felonies doubled from about 8% in 2019 to 16% in 2023. So they’re stealing expensive stuff and more of it.
🔥Bottom line: What’s going on here? In short: a cultural shift. We carry video cameras in our pockets and we love to share the stuff we record. An increase in crazy smash and grab shoplifting videos on Facebook and the news may lead you to believe there’s a growing problem, but they don’t reflect reality. The numbers show nothing has really changed overall.
What do you think of the numbers?
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