A new report out by Capitol One pins the cost of retail shrinkage – primarily shoplifting & employee theft – at over $95 billion in 2023, and trends suggest that number could grow to more than $115 billion by 2025, a near doubling of costs to retailers in 5 years. Further, according to the report, about 9% of Americans currently engage in shoplifting and retail theft. Frankly, the thought that even 1 in 20 people (5%) would engage in stealing from stores is staggering, let alone close to double that.
When retailers lose inventory to theft, they pass those costs on to paying customers. So how much is that 9% of the population costing you? Take that $95 billion number from this year and divide it by the 91% of the U.S. population (or about 298 million people) who aren’t stuffing their pockets with stolen goods, and you come up with $318 – that’s how much retail theft will directly cost each of us this year.
But direct costs aren’t the whole story. In response to the explosion in retail theft, many stores have hired additional security and implemented other measures to prevent theft. These things cost money, also, and those costs are passed on to consumers as well. Further, these are reported figures and, as we recently learned with news of a Lululemon store in Texas that fired two employees for reporting a shoplifting case to police, many stores are likely not even reporting the total of their losses due to political considerations. The total cost to consumers is almost certainly much higher once you add in these factors.
And the numbers make it clear this isn’t – as those pro-criminal politicians would like you to believe – just people living on the edge and stealing to survive. $95 billion divided by the approximately 29 million people engaged in retail theft equals more than $3,275 per thief. Given that a lot of thieves will end up stealing far less than that, it’s abundantly clear that these numbers are being driven by organized, for-profit theft rings, not a few struggling citizens.
How much more of this is America going to tolerate before we throw all the George Soros-aligned soft-on-crime prosecutors and government leaders out of office and restore sanity to shopping by arresting and jailing the perpetrators?
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.