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A data-driven guide to retail theft in the United States — covering shrinkage costs, the 2025 decline in shoplifting, the shift toward organized retail crime and fraud, violence against retail workers, and what security strategies are working in 2026.
For three years, the story in retail security was simple: theft was rising, and rising fast. In 2026 that story changed. The National Retail Federation's latest data shows shoplifting incidents down double digits, and national property crime falling at the fastest rate in decades.
That is genuinely good news — and it is also the most misread statistic in retail security right now. The volume of casual shoplifting fell. The organized, higher-risk end of retail crime did not. For retail managers, property owners, and security professionals, understanding that distinction is the difference between cutting security in the wrong place and investing it in the right one.
The statistics below lay out both halves of the picture, and the data-backed case for professional retail security and loss prevention services.
The NRF's Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2026 report surveyed senior loss prevention and security executives between February and April 2026, covering 66 retail companies representing 143 brands and $1.7 trillion in annual sales — 31.6% of total U.S. retail. Its headline finding reversed several years of trend data:
| Metric | Change (2025 vs. 2024) | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Shoplifting incidents | ↓ 12.4% | Declining |
| Retail merchandise theft | ↓ 8.1% | Declining |
| External theft schemes, fraud, scams | Rising | Increasing |
Source: NRF — Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2026
What the 2026 data describes is not retreat but substitution. As retailers hardened stores — locking cases, adding officers, redesigning layouts — casual opportunistic theft became harder and less rewarding. The response from the criminal side was to move up the sophistication curve: fewer walk-in grab-and-runs, more coordinated operations, return fraud, gift card and phone scams, and e-commerce exploitation.
The practical implication for store operators is counterintuitive. A falling shoplifting number is partly evidence that security investment worked — not a signal to unwind it. The retailers reporting the largest declines are generally the ones who invested most heavily in deterrence.
"Shrinkage" — the industry term for inventory loss from all causes — remains one of the largest controllable costs in retail, even with shoplifting down.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| External theft share of shrink | ~36% | NRF (2026) |
| Employee/internal theft share of shrink | ~29% | NRF (2026) |
| ORC share of shrink specifically | ~10% | Appriss (2026) |
| Global retail shrink (2024 benchmark) | $132 billion (vs. $112B in 2022) | Capital One via InVue |
| U.S. shoplifting losses (2024 baseline) | $45 billion | L.A. Darling/NRF |
Taken together, theft-related causes — external plus internal — account for roughly 65% of total inventory loss. The remainder comes from inventory errors, vendor fraud, and operational inefficiency, which are process problems rather than security problems.
That 65% figure is the one worth holding onto. Even in a year when shoplifting fell 12.4%, roughly two-thirds of shrink still traces back to someone taking something — and nearly half of that is happening inside the building, from employees rather than customers.
The National Retail Federation discontinued its 32-year annual shrink report in 2024 over methodology concerns (Retail Dive). Total-dollar shrink figures published since then come from third-party analyses rather than the NRF's original series, which is why the $132 billion and $45 billion figures above carry 2024 reference dates while the incident-rate data is current to 2026. The NRF continues to publish its Impact of Retail Theft & Violence report, which is the source for the trend data on this page.
The decline in shoplifting is corroborated outside the retail industry's own survey data. FBI figures for 2025 show property crime falling across the board:
Two independent measurement systems — police-reported crime data and retailer self-reporting — landing on nearly identical declines is unusually strong evidence. This is a real trend, not a reporting artifact.
The caution attached to it: the same NRF report finds that the incidents that remain are disproportionately the serious ones. Retailers report 50% repeat offenders, 40% ORC-related incidents, and 37% walkout or pushout theft — the high-value, higher-confrontation events that a locked display case does not stop.
Falling theft volume has not translated into a proportionate drop in risk to store employees. The composition of incidents matters more than the count:
Retail employees are still, by policy at most chains, prohibited from physically confronting shoplifters — and rightly so. That policy protects staff, but it leaves a gap: someone has to be present, trained, and authorized to respond when an incident escalates.
This is where professional loss prevention officers fill the role. Trained security personnel deter theft through visible presence, intervene safely when incidents occur, and shield employees from the confrontations that remain the most dangerous part of retail work.
"The numbers coming down is real, and our clients are seeing it. What I'd caution against is reading that as a reason to pull security out. The stores where shoplifting dropped the most are the stores that put officers on the floor two years ago. And the incidents that are left are the harder ones — repeat offenders, crews working together, people who aren't deterred by a locked case. Those are exactly the situations you don't want a sales associate handling alone."
— Amanda DeAlmeida, Executive Vice President, Building Security Services
Organized retail crime — coordinated, professional theft operations — is the segment that did not decline. As casual shoplifting fell, ORC and fraud schemes absorbed the shift:
| Incident Type | Share of Retailers Reporting |
|---|---|
| Repeat offenders | 50% |
| ORC-related incidents | 40% |
| Walkout / pushout theft | 37% |
Source: NRF — Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2026
ORC operations are not opportunistic. They target specific high-value merchandise, deploy teams of boosters, and fence goods through online marketplaces and resale networks. Countering them takes more than traditional loss prevention — it requires trained officers who can recognize crew behavior, coordinated surveillance, incident documentation, and intelligence sharing across locations.
The NRF's 2026 report reflects 66 retail companies operating 143 brands, representing $1.7 trillion in fiscal 2025 sales, or 31.6% of total U.S. retail (NRF). That is a larger base than the prior year's survey, which covered $1.3 trillion in sales — so the declining incident numbers are not an artifact of a shrinking sample.
One caveat applies to every retail theft statistic, including the encouraging ones: a large share of retail theft never reaches law enforcement. In the prior year's NRF survey, 64% of retailers reported less than half of store theft to police, with lack of law enforcement response cited as the primary reason (NRF 2025).
This matters for interpreting the 2025 decline. Police-reported larceny fell 9.8% and retailer-reported shoplifting fell 12.4% — the fact that both moved together is what makes the trend credible. But the absolute level of retail theft remains understated in every public dataset, because the reporting gap has not closed.
The practical consequence is unchanged: retailers cannot rely on public law enforcement as their primary theft response. When the public safety net has gaps, private security fills them — providing visible deterrence, incident response, and the documentation that makes prosecution possible when a case does move forward. This is a significant part of why demand for retail security officers has held steady even as theft counts declined.
The measures retailers scaled up over the past three years are the most plausible explanation for the 2025 decline. According to NRF reporting, the categories retailers increased most include:
Specific measures deployed (NRF):
The lesson of the 2026 data is that this investment produced measurable results — and that the threat adapted rather than disappeared. Retailers now face a split problem: physical deterrence in-store, and fraud detection across returns, gift cards, and e-commerce channels. The first still requires people on the floor. The second increasingly requires coordination between security, operations, and finance.
New York City's retail environment presents distinct challenges — high foot traffic, dense urban locations, and proximity to transit hubs all create opportunities for retail crime. The city's trend line matches the national one:
For retailers operating in the NYC metro area, the combination of high volume, organized crime activity, and transit proximity means professional security remains a business requirement even in a declining-crime year. Mall security, in-store officers, and parking lot patrols all play a role in comprehensive retail protection.
Based on the data, here are the evidence-based strategies leading retailers and security professionals are using in 2026:
The single most effective deterrent against shoplifting remains a uniformed security officer on the floor. The 2025 decline in shoplifting followed three years of retailers adding exactly this — which is the strongest available evidence that it works.
Security cameras, electronic article surveillance (EAS), license plate readers, and remote video monitoring create overlapping layers of detection and deterrence.
Store layout modifications — improved sight lines, strategic product placement, better lighting — reduce opportunities for theft. Security professionals often advise on these changes as part of a comprehensive security risk assessment.
With half of retailers reporting repeat offenders and more than a third reporting walkout theft, retailers must continue to prioritize employee safety over merchandise recovery. Clear policies, de-escalation training, and professional security officers protect staff from dangerous confrontations.
With 50% of retailers reporting repeat offenders, incident documentation has become the highest-leverage loss prevention activity available. Professional security teams log incidents, identify returning offenders, and share intelligence across locations — building the case files that turn a recurring problem into a prosecutable one.
"Retail theft prevention comes down to three things: presence, awareness, and response. A trained officer who knows how to read body language, position themselves at high-theft areas, and de-escalate confrontations will do more to reduce shrinkage than any amount of locked display cases. The technology matters, but the human element is what makes it all work."
— Amanda DeAlmeida, Executive Vice President, Building Security Services
Down, by most measures. Shoplifting incidents fell 12.4% in 2025 and retail merchandise theft fell 8.1%, according to the National Retail Federation. FBI data independently shows national property crime down 12.4% and larceny-theft down 9.8% over the same period. However, fraud, scams, and organized retail crime schemes continued to rise, so total retail crime has shifted in character rather than simply declining.
Roughly 65%. External theft accounts for about 36% of shrink and internal or employee theft for about 29%. Organized retail crime specifically represents around 10% of shrink. The remainder comes from inventory errors, vendor fraud, and operational inefficiency rather than theft.
Because retailers hardened their stores. Three years of investment in locking cases, uniformed officers, improved lighting, and layout changes made casual opportunistic theft harder and less rewarding. Organized crews adapted by moving up the sophistication curve into coordinated operations, return fraud, gift card schemes, and e-commerce exploitation. The falling shoplifting number is partly evidence that security investment worked.
The data argues against it. The retailers reporting the largest declines are generally those who invested most heavily in deterrence, which makes security spending a plausible cause of the improvement rather than a cost that can now be removed. The incidents that remain are also disproportionately serious: 50% of retailers report repeat offenders, 40% report ORC-related incidents, and 37% report walkout or pushout theft.
Less than half, at most retailers. In NRF survey data, 64% of retailers said they report less than half of store theft to law enforcement, citing lack of police response as the primary reason. This means every public retail theft statistic understates the true level, and it is a significant reason retailers rely on private security rather than public law enforcement for day-to-day theft response.
Visible security presence is widely regarded as the most effective single deterrent against shoplifting, and the 2025 decline followed three years of retailers adding exactly that. A uniformed officer signals active monitoring, deters opportunistic theft before it starts, and provides trained response when incidents escalate — which matters most for the repeat-offender and walkout theft events that make up a growing share of remaining incidents.
Improving, in line with national trends. NYC recorded 29,731 grand larceny complaints through late August 2026, down 5.1% from the same period in 2025, and 121,652 total major crimes in 2025. Midtown Manhattan has the city's highest property crime rate and is also its most concentrated retail district, and grand larceny in Manhattan is nearly three times more likely than in Brooklyn.
Building Security Services provides trained retail security officers and loss prevention specialists for stores, malls, and shopping centers throughout NYC and New Jersey.
Get a Free Retail Security Quote →All statistics are sourced from the National Retail Federation's annual surveys, the FBI's national crime statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, NYPD CompStat data, and established retail industry research organizations. The NRF's 2026 report represented 66 retail companies operating 143 brands with $1.7 trillion in fiscal 2025 sales. Where a figure carries an earlier reference year, that year is stated explicitly — total-dollar shrink estimates lag incident-rate data because the NRF discontinued its annual shrink series in 2024. All figures are the most recent available as of September 2026.
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