Retail Shrinkage Statistics (2026): Causes and Costs

Shrinkage is the quiet tax on every retail business: stock that appears in your records but never reaches a paying customer. This page collects the most reliable retail shrinkage statistics we could verify from named sources, covering the total cost of shrink, how it breaks down by cause, employee versus external theft, self-checkout loss, global inventory distortion, and what data exists for Asia-Pacific and Singapore. Every number below is cited inline with the year it refers to, so you can quote it with confidence.

Top statistics

US retailers lost US$112.1 billion to shrink in FY2022, up from $93.9 billion a year earlier (National Retail Federation, 2023).
Average shrink ran at 1.6% of sales in FY2022, up from 1.4% the previous year (NRF National Retail Security Survey, 2023).
External theft drove 36% of shrink and internal theft 29% — together roughly two-thirds of all losses (NRF / LP Research Council, 2023).
Process and control failures — administrative and paperwork error — accounted for 27% of shrink (NRF NRSS, 2023).
Inventory distortion (out-of-stocks plus overstocks) cost retailers US$1.77 trillion worldwide in 2023 (IHL Group, 2024).
Self-checkout shrink hit 3.5% of sales versus 0.21% at staffed lanes — about 16 times higher (Grabango study, 2023).
The average dishonest-employee case was worth US$1,136.93 in 2022 (Jack L. Hayes International, 2023).
Reported shoplifting incidents jumped 93% in 2023 versus pre-pandemic 2019 (NRF, 2024).
Singapore recorded 4,237 shop theft cases in 2024, up 7.6% and making up 21.2% of physical crime (Singapore Police Force, 2025).
Asia-Pacific averaged a 1.75% shrink rate — the lowest of the four world regions surveyed (Sensormatic Global Shrink Index, 2018).

The total cost of retail shrink

US retail shrink totalled US$112.1 billion in FY2022, a sharp rise from $93.9 billion the year before (NRF, 2023).
Shrink first crossed the US$90 billion mark in 2020 and reached US$94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion (NRF National Retail Security Survey, 2022).
The average shrink rate reached 1.6% of sales in FY2022, above the roughly 1.5% five-year average (NRF, 2023).
In FY2021 the rate sat at 1.44%, in line with the historical trend (NRF, 2022).
More recent modelling puts US retail theft losses at US$44.2 billion in 2024 and a projected US$47.8 billion in 2025 (Capital One Shopping Research, 2025).
US retailers lose an estimated US$100 billion in inventory to organised retail crime each year (Capital One Shopping Research, 2025).

Note on sources: the NRF discontinued its annual National Retail Security Survey after the 2023 edition, so FY2022 ($112.1 billion, 1.6%) remains the most recent official NRF shrink dataset. For 2024–2026 estimates, Capital One Shopping’s modelling is the more current reference.

What causes shrink: the breakdown

External theft, including organised retail crime, accounted for 36% of shrink in FY2022 (NRF / LP Research Council, 2023).
Internal or employee theft made up 29% of shrink (NRF NRSS, 2023).
Process and control failures — administrative and paperwork error — were 27% of shrink (NRF NRSS, 2023).
Unknown loss accounted for 6% and other causes about 1% (NRF NRSS, 2023).
Internal and external theft combined made up nearly two-thirds of retailers’ shrink in FY2022 (NRF, 2023).

The pattern is consistent: theft is the largest driver, but administrative and process error is close behind and is the cause retailers have most control over through better inventory discipline.

Employee theft versus external theft

The average dishonest-employee case was worth US$1,136.93 in 2022, well above the average shoplifter case (Jack L. Hayes International, 2023).
Participating retailers apprehended 44,834 dishonest employees across 22,182 stores in 2022 (Jack L. Hayes International, 2023).
The average shoplifter case was worth US$802.01, with 295,654 shoplifters apprehended in 2022 (Jack L. Hayes International, 2023).
Total recovery from employee and shoplifter apprehensions reached US$288 million in 2022 (Jack L. Hayes International, 2023).
The average shoplifting incident cost retailers about US$461.86 per event (Capital One Shopping Research, 2020 figure).

Organised retail crime and shoplifting trends

Reported shoplifting incidents rose 93% in 2023 compared with pre-pandemic 2019, with dollar loss up 90% over the same period (NRF, 2024).
Retailers reported a 57% average increase in organised retail crime incidents heading into 2024 (NRF, 2024).
91% of retailers said shoplifters were more violent and aggressive than in 2019 (NRF, 2024).
67% of survey respondents reported even more violence from ORC perpetrators than a year earlier (NRF NRSS, 2023).
Reported shoplifting incidents eased from 1.51 million in 2023 to 1.45 million in 2024, and stores catch shoplifters only around 2% of the time (Capital One Shopping Research, 2025).

Administrative error and supplier issues

Process, control failures and errors — the administrative and paperwork category — were 27% of total shrink in FY2022, a share retailers can attack with tighter stock control (NRF NRSS, 2023).
Supplier and vendor issues were the single largest driver of inventory distortion, at US$418 billion globally (IHL Group, 2024).
Theft accounted for US$379 billion of distortion — roughly US$203 billion consumer theft and US$175 billion employee theft (IHL Group, 2024).

Self-checkout and shrink

Self-checkout shrink reached 3.5% of sales versus 0.21% at staffed lanes — about 16 times higher (Grabango study, 2023).
6.7% of self-checkout transactions had partial shrink from missed or unscanned items, versus 0.32% at cashier lanes (Grabango study, 2023).
Stores with fixed self-checkout recorded losses roughly 90–100% higher than comparable stores without it (ECR Retail Loss, 2018).
Where 55–60% of transactions ran through fixed self-checkout, shrinkage was 31% higher than baseline (ECR Retail Loss, 2018).
Non-scanning at fixed self-checkout equalled just 0.44% of self-checkout sales but represented 9.5% of all store-recorded shrinkage (ECR Retail Loss, 2018).

Inventory distortion: the bigger picture

Shrink is one part of a wider problem. Inventory distortion — the combined cost of stockouts and overstocks — dwarfs theft-related shrink alone.

Global inventory distortion cost retailers US$1.77 trillion in 2023 (IHL Group, 2024).
Out-of-stocks alone accounted for US$1.2 trillion of that total (IHL Group, 2024).
Overstocks accounted for a further US$562 billion (IHL Group, 2024).

The lesson for operators: theft grabs the headlines, but poor inventory accuracy — the wrong stock in the wrong place — quietly costs far more.

Retail crime’s operational impact

28% of retailers closed specific store locations because of retail crime in FY2022 (NRF, 2023).
45% reduced operating hours in response to retail crime (NRF, 2023).
30% reduced or altered their product selection because of theft (NRF, 2023).

Asia-Pacific and Singapore figures

Standalone shrinkage rates for Singapore are not published, but shop-theft counts, regional shrink benchmarks and retail-sales context give a useful picture.

Singapore recorded 4,237 shop theft cases in 2024, up 7.6% (298 cases) on 2023 and making up 21.2% of physical crime (Singapore Police Force, 2025).
Shop theft eased to 4,109 cases in 2025, down 3.0%, with over half of cases involving losses below S$50 (Singapore Police Force, 2026).
Singapore’s total retail sales value was about S$4.3 billion in April 2026, up 5.4% year-on-year, with 15.4% of sales online (SingStat, 2026).
Asia-Pacific averaged a 1.75% shrink rate — the lowest of the four world regions, against 1.85% in the USA (Sensormatic Global Shrink Index, 2018).
Within APAC, India had the highest shrink rate at 2.13% and Japan the lowest at 1.44% (Sensormatic Global Shrink Index, 2018).
Globally, shrink cost retailers US$99.56 billion at a 1.82% rate in that same survey (Sensormatic Global Shrink Index, 2018).
An earlier global benchmark put Asia-Pacific shrinkage at 1.28% of sales, or US$37.62 billion, against a global 1.29% (Global Retail Theft Barometer, 2014).

Because no Singapore-specific shrink percentage exists, the Asia-Pacific benchmark is the closest defensible proxy and should always be cited as a regional, not a Singapore, figure.

How WhiteBox helps

Most shrink retailers can actually control comes from process and administrative error — miscounts, unrecorded transfers, receiving mistakes — not just theft. WhiteBox keeps one real-time source of truth for stock across every channel and warehouse, so discrepancies surface early instead of at year-end stocktake. See our inventory management guide for the fundamentals, or start a free trial and review pricing from S$49 a month.

Frequently asked questions

What is retail shrinkage? Retail shrinkage is the loss of inventory between the point it is recorded in your system and the point it is sold. It is usually measured as a percentage of sales and is caused by theft, administrative error, and supplier fraud.

What is the average retail shrink rate? US retailers averaged a 1.6% shrink rate in FY2022 according to the NRF National Retail Security Survey (2023). Asia-Pacific averaged 1.75% in the Sensormatic Global Shrink Index (2018).

What causes the most shrinkage? External theft was the largest single cause at 36% of shrink in FY2022, followed by employee theft at 29% and administrative or process error at 27% (NRF NRSS, 2023).

Is self-checkout worse for shrink? Yes. A 2023 Grabango study found self-checkout shrink of 3.5% of sales versus 0.21% at staffed lanes — roughly 16 times higher.

How much does shrink cost retailers globally? US shrink alone reached US$112.1 billion in FY2022 (NRF, 2023), and global inventory distortion — stockouts plus overstocks — cost US$1.77 trillion in 2023 (IHL Group, 2024).

Sources

Cite us: you are welcome to reference or quote these retail shrinkage statistics. Please credit WhiteBox with a link back to this page (whitebox.sg/retail-shrinkage-statistics) so readers can check the original sources.