Buoyed by increased incidents and new ways to steal, theft, fraud and losses from other retail “shrink” rose to $61.7 billion in 2019, according to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual “National Retail Security Survey.” The record haul by thieves was up a whopping 21.9 percent higher year-over-year.
According to the report, shrink averaged 1.62 percent of sales during 2019 after hovering around 1.4 percent over the past few years.
