In the United States, reported incidents are down 12.4%. In the United Kingdom, retailers recorded 5.5 million detected thefts. Read side by side, these figures seem to contradict each other. In reality, they do not measure the same thing. A number of incidents is not a monetary amount, and a survey of retail chains does not count what the police record. This page brings together the most recent public data, country by country, stating each time who is measuring, what is measured, over what scope and for which year. It is updated with each new edition of the studies (last updated: October 2026).

United States: fewer reported incidents in 2025

The National Retail Federation and the Loss Prevention Research Council publish The Impact of Theft & Violence every year. The 2026 edition was released on July 30. It draws on an online survey conducted from February to April 2026 among the loss prevention managers of 66 companies, representing 143 retail brands. These are therefore responses from retail chains, expressed as changes over time, and not a national total. The NRF press release on the 2026 study summarizes the results:

  • shoplifting incidents: down 12.4% in 2025 compared with 2024;
  • theft of merchandise: down 8.1% over the same period;
  • 63% of retailers say they report fewer than half of these incidents to law enforcement;
  • 40% have seen an increase in incidents linked to organized crime.

This decline comes after a year of sharp increase. The previous edition (October 2025, 70 companies and 168 retail brands) reported an 18% rise in the average number of incidents in 2024 compared with 2023. Because the panel changes from one edition to the next, what we can read here is a trend, not a strictly continuous series.

United Kingdom: 5.5 million incidents detected

The British Retail Consortium surveys its member retailers for its Crime Survey. The 2026 edition, published on February 24, covers the latest year of the survey, 2024-2025. According to the BRC press release on its 2026 survey, retailers recorded 5.5 million detected shoplifting incidents, at a cost of nearly 400 million pounds, an amount the BRC itself considers likely to be lower than the real cost. Theft of parcels in delivery, which appears in the survey for the first time, alone exceeds 100 million pounds. For staff, violence and verbal abuse are down to around 1,600 per day, compared with 2,000 in 2023-2024. Everything hinges on the word detected: the figure counts what stores saw, not all the thefts committed.

Germany: over 3 billion euros of theft by customers

The EHI Retail Institute publishes its Inventurdifferenzen study (inventory differences) every year. The 2026 edition, released on June 23, covers the year 2025. It is based on 103 companies or sales channels, representing 21,225 stores, and its results are then extrapolated to the whole German retail sector. The EHI press release on 2025 inventory differences puts total shrinkage at 5.11 billion euros (up 3.2%), broken down as follows:

  • theft by customers: 3.05 billion euros;
  • internal theft by employees: 910 million euros;
  • suppliers and service providers: 370 million euros;
  • organizational errors: 780 million euros.

The most telling figure in the study lies elsewhere. The EHI estimates the number of undetected shoplifting cases at around 24.8 million, with an average value of 123 euros: over 98% of cases would be neither spotted nor reported. Organized theft, most often carried out by groups, would account for around a third of shoplifting, or about one billion euros. Against this, prevention spending reaches 1.7 billion euros.

Europe and France: few recent public data series

At the European level, we did not find any recent, public, annually updated figure. The ECR Retail Loss group, which brings together retailers and manufacturers, commissions and publishes independent research, conducted with academics, on shrinkage, on-shelf availability and food waste. This research sheds light on methods more than it provides a European total.

In France, the French Ministry of the Interior's annual report on insecurity and crime does not isolate shoplifting, which is counted among simple thefts, and recorded offenses in any case only include cases brought to the attention of the police and gendarmerie. The most recent insight comes from an online survey by the retailers' collective Ras le vol: 1,350 shopkeepers and craftspeople responded between January and March 2025, out of 5,212 contacted, which means it is not a representative sample. 82% say they suffered thefts in 2024, and they report a 15.5% increase compared with 2023. Only a little over half of the victims (52%) took steps with the authorities. The collective also cites the Ministry of the Interior figure for 2022: a 14.77% rise in shoplifting, or nearly 42,000 recorded offenses. The two sources do not match. One counts procedures, the other what shopkeepers say they experience.

Why these figures cannot be compared across countries

Comparing the 5.5 million British incidents with the 24.8 million undetected thefts in Germany makes no sense. The methods differ on five points:

  1. The unit: change in a number of incidents (NRF), absolute number (BRC), extrapolated amount in euros (EHI), share of affected shopkeepers (France).
  2. The source: panel of reporting retailers, statistical extrapolation, recorded offenses or survey.
  3. The scope: large retail chains in the United States and the United Kingdom, the retail sector as a whole in Germany, small shops and craftspeople in France.
  4. The period: calendar year 2025 for the NRF and the EHI, fiscal year 2024-2025 for the BRC, year 2024 for the French survey.
  5. The definition: a detected, estimated or reported theft does not reflect the same reality.

A figure should first be compared with itself, from one edition of the same study to the next.

Reading these figures for your own store

A national study gives a trend and an order of magnitude. It says nothing about what happens in the health and beauty aisle of your store on a Saturday afternoon. To use it without being misled:

  • Start from your own shrinkage, inventory after inventory, separating known losses (breakage, expiry) from the unexplained. Our guide to understanding and calculating shrinkage details the method, and our shrinkage calculator converts it into an annual amount.
  • Compare trends, not levels. If the market is declining while your stock discrepancies are rising, the cause is probably local: store layout, staffing, opening hours.
  • Keep underreporting in mind. When the EHI estimates that over 98% of cases escape stores, the incidents you know about are only the visible part.
  • Track a few key shrinkage indicators at regular intervals and cross-check them against the list of most stolen products in stores.

The most useful data remains local: in which zones and at which times losses are concentrated. Knowing that discrepancies occur at the end of the day in a specific aisle is more useful than a national average. This is what video analysis tools provide. At Oxania, for example, more than 10,000 at-risk gestures are analyzed every day, and the dashboards by zone and time slot show where and when risk is concentrated. The technology detects, the team decides what to do next. Combined with inventories, this reading makes it possible to place your store in relation to national trends without confusing the two.