Around 70% to 80% of transactions in the crypto secondary market transactions occur between crypto assets and stablecoins. The South Korean government’s welcoming stance, coupled with the high popularity of crypto assets in the country, are among the reasons why the won is now the second most-used fiat currency. Decline in 2021/2 Crypto-to-Stablecoin Volumes According […]
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A large share of Americans worry about their nest eggs.
CNBC’s International Your Money Financial Security Survey polled about 500 people each in nine countries. Of the 498 people surveyed in the U.S., more than half (53%) said they’re behind schedule in retirement planning and savings. The poll was conducted by SurveyMonkey.
“I think most Americans do struggle to save enough for retirement,” said David Blanchett, a certified financial planner and head of retirement research for PGIM, a money manager.
For many families, money held in individual retirement accounts and 401(k)-type plans are a “key determinant” of future retirement security, according the according to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
Just 54% of Americans had a retirement account as of 2022, according to the SCF, which is published every three years. Their typical balance was $87,000, as measured by the median value.
The picture isn’t much different for those who are on the precipice of retirement. To that point, the typical 55- to 64-year-old had saved just $71,000 in a 401(k)-type plan as of 2022, according to Vanguard Group data.
“Most Americans are going to need to save for retirement,” Blanchett said. “Yes, you can live off Social Security. But that’s probably not going to replace your pre-retirement standard of living.”
Ample competing financial priorities can make it challenging to save for old age.
Sometimes, especially for lower earners, there’s a choice between survival today and ensuring for a good standard of living in the future, Blanchett said.
In 2022, households in the bottom 25% by wealth had a $3,500 median net worth, according to the SCF. By comparison, the top 10% had a $3.8 million net worth.
Households across income and wealth spectrums may simultaneously be trying to set aside money for financial emergencies, college savings, and buying a car or home, for example.
Credit-card debt is at all-time highs, suggesting Americans have leaned more on credit cards to pay their bills.
“It’s hard to save for retirement when you’re not able to pay your rent,” Blanchett said.
Households shoulder more responsibility to save for their futures as employers have shifted away from pensions toward 401(k) plans.
Three in four (74%) of U.S. adults polled by CNBC expect to rely on government support in retirement, but only 42% of respondents are confident in the government’s ability to support them.
Social Security benefits are funded via payroll taxes and assets held in a federal trust fund. However, demographic trends have stressed that trust fund. It’s set to be depleted in 2033, at which point about 77% of promised benefits would be payable.
Congress is likely to intervene and the current benefit formula is unlikely to change for current and near retirees, experts said.
Globally, Americans seem to trail residents of other nations when it comes to sentiment around retirement preparedness, the CNBC survey found.
CNBC polled residents from Australia, France, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, in addition to the U.S.
About 74% of respondents in France, 70% in Singapore and 65% in Mexico report being on schedule for retirement planning and savings, for example, the poll found. About 59% of respondents in Switzerland, 58% in Spain, 56% in the UK, 51% in Germany and 50% in Australia did so — all higher than the 47% among U.S. respondents.
“When compared with some of the more highly rated retirement systems, the U.S. falls short because employers do not have to offer a retirement plan, employees do not have to save and can easily withdraw what they do save, and our levels of personal debt cripple the ability of young workers to ever begin to save for their future,” said Angela Antonelli, executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Retirement Initiatives.
She called these “fundamental and persistent challenges” to Americans’ retirement confidence and security.
Yet, several states have launched so-called “auto-IRA” programs to boost worker access and try closing the retirement savings gap.
Auto-IRAs require businesses that don’t offer a retirement plan to facilitate payroll deduction into a state-run program. They’re still in the “early stages of implementation,” but have already accumulated 845,000 new funded accounts and 212,000 registered employers, she said.
In the first quarter of 2024, more than $336 million in digital assets were stolen from decentralized finance platforms across 61 incidents of hacking and fraud. During this period, criminals made off with digital assets valued at $144.48 million in two major hacking incidents. In contrast, centralized finance platforms reported no incidents of hacking or […]
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(Bloomberg) — Pig-butchering scammers have likely stolen more than $75 billion from victims around the world, far more than previously estimated, according to a new study.
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John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and graduate student Kevin Mei gathered crypto addresses from more than 4,000 victims of the fraud, which has exploded in popularity since the pandemic. With blockchain tracing tools, they tracked the flow of funds from victims to scammers, who are largely based in Southeast Asia.
Over four years, from January 2020 to February 2024, the criminal networks moved more than $75 billion to crypto exchanges, said Griffin, who has written about fraud in financial markets. Some of the total could represent proceeds from other criminal activities, he said.
“These are large criminal organized networks, and they’re operating largely unscathed,” Griffin said in an interview.
Pig butchering — a scam named after the practice of farmers fattening hogs before slaughter — often starts with what appears to be a wrong-number text message. People who respond are lured into crypto investments. But the investments are fake, and once victims send enough funds, the scammers disappear. As far-fetched as it sounds, victims routinely lose hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. One Kansas banker was charged this month with embezzling $47.1 million from his bank as part of a pig-butchering scam.
The people sending the messages are often themselves victims of human trafficking from across Southeast Asia. They’re lured to compounds in countries including Cambodia and Myanmar with offers of high-paying jobs, then trapped, forced to scam, and sometimes beaten and tortured. The United Nations has estimated more than 200,000 people are being held in scam compounds.
The study, “How Do Crypto Flows Finance Slavery? The Economics of Pig Butchering,” was released on Thursday. Griffin and Mei found that $15 billion had come from five exchanges, including Coinbase, typically used by victims in Western countries. The study said that once the scammers collected funds, they most often converted them into Tether, a popular stablecoin. Of the addresses touched by the criminals, 84% of the transaction volume was in Tether.
“In the old days, it would be extremely difficult to move that much cash through the financial system,” Griffin said. “You’d have to go through banks and follow ‘know-your-customer’ procedures. Or you’d have to put cash in bags.”
Paolo Ardoino, the chief executive officer of Tether, called the report false and misleading. “With Tether, every action is online, every action is traceable, every asset can be seized and every criminal can be caught,” Ardoino said in a statement. “We work with law enforcement to do exactly that.”
Tether has cooperated with authorities in some cases to freeze accounts tied to fraud. But often by the time the crime is reported, the scammers have already cashed out.
“Our paper shows they’re the currency of choice for criminal networks,” Griffin said.
Chainalysis Inc., a blockchain analysis firm, also said the study’s totals might be inflated. Just because a blockchain address receives some money from a pig-butchering scam doesn’t mean all the money received by that address comes from fraud. “Quantifying funds earned through pig-butchering scams is challenging given limited reporting,” said Maddie Kennedy, a spokesperson for Chainalysis. Tether is a one of the company’s customers.
Many of the fraud victims’ blockchain addresses were collected by Chainbrium, a Norwegian crypto investigations firm. Chainbrium also conducted its own analysis of the data and found that a large proportion of the funds flowed through a purportedly decentralized crypto exchange called Tokenlon. Scammers use the exchange to obscure the source of the funds, according to Chainbrium. Tokenlon didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“People in the US, their money is going straight to Southeast Asia, into this underground economy,” said Jan Santiago, a consultant to Chainbrium.
Eventually, the criminals would send the scam proceeds to centralized crypto exchanges to cash out for traditional money. Griffin said Binance was the most popular exchange, even after the company and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty in November to criminal anti-money-laundering and sanctions charges and agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve a long-running investigation by prosecutors and regulators.
“Binance is the place where they can move large amounts of money out of the system,” Griffin said.
Like Tether, Binance has worked with law enforcement in some cases to freeze accounts tied to fraud and return money to victims. A spokesman for the company said it recently worked with authorities to seize $112 million in a pig-butchering case.
“Binance continues to work closely with law enforcement and regulators to raise more awareness of scams, including pig butchering cases,” the spokesman, Simon Matthews, said.
(Adds comments from Chainalysis in the 12th paragraph.)
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Crypto mixer Tornado Cash has reportedly fallen victim to a significant backend exploit that has put user deposits and sensitive data at risk.
The security breach was revealed in a Medium post by Gas404, a community member, on Feb. 26.
The exploit represents a critical vulnerability for Tornado Cash, whose trading volume already suffered a dramatic decline following sanctions from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) in August 2022.
The sanctions, which were part of broader measures targeting the crypto sector, had significantly reduced the mixer’s operational scale even before the exploit.
According to the Medium post, malicious JavaScript code was discovered in the protocol’s backend. It was reported injected through a compromised governance proposal submitted by an individual posing as a Tornado Cash developer on Jan. 1.
The code surreptitiously redirects user deposit information to a server controlled by the attacker, posing a dual threat — the exposure of deposit data and the outright theft of the deposits themselves.
One such theft has been confirmed through transaction records on Etherscan, highlighting the exploit’s immediate impact.
The exploit’s technical details were discussed at length in the community post, illustrating the sophisticated nature of the attack.
Specifically, the malicious code was designed to encode and exfiltrate private deposit notes, effectively breaching the anonymity and security that Tornado Cash users depend on.
In response to the crisis, Gas404 has proposed a solution to mitigate the damage: reverting Tornado Cash to a prior version of its IPFS deployment.
The move aims to secure the platform against the current vulnerability by utilizing a previously established and ostensibly secure infrastructure setup.
The proposed change emphasizes the urgency of addressing security flaws within decentralized platforms, where governance proposals can be manipulated for malicious purposes.
The Tornado Cash website and Discord channel were taken offline following the revelation and have yet to come back online — an indication of the exploit’s severity and the ongoing efforts to contain its repercussions.
Rate cuts, an increased chance of a soft landing and lower inflation — the outlook for next year is looking up in the CNBC Fed Survey, to a point.
Respondents to the CNBC Fed Survey see the Federal Reserve beginning rate cuts next year, though not as aggressively or as quickly as markets have priced in. June is the first month for which more than half of respondents have a reduction built in, rising to 69% by July. Overall, the average respondent forecasts about 85 basis points of cuts next year, roughly one 25 basis point trim a quarter, but not as much as the 120 basis points built into futures markets.
“The Fed needs to begin laying out a road map to rate cuts that may represent tighter policy since cuts will be lagging the decline in inflation and real rates will be rising,” writes John Ryding, chief economic advisor to Brean Capital, in response to the survey.
Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. economist at Nationwide, writes in, “The markets have prematurely priced in high odds of rate cuts starting in Q1, but we do expect further steady disinflation will lead the Fed to begin rate cuts around mid-year.”
Like the Fed itself, the 35 respondents to the survey, including economists, strategists and analysts, separate into hawks and doves on the issue of rate cuts next year.
“I still believe (Powell) has the memories of the 1970s in his mind and will be more stubborn in keeping monetary policy tight for longer than markets want him to be,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Financial Group.
But Michael Englund of Action Economics writes in, “The U.S. headline y/y inflation metrics will fall sharply into early-2024 thanks to weakness in energy prices and easier comparisons, leaving the Fed with significant elbow room to start tightening even if core year over year inflation rates remain firm.”
Respondents boosted the probability of a soft landing to 47%, up 5 points from the October survey. They lowered the probability of a recession in the next year by 8 points to 41%, the lowest since the spring of 2022.
Still, the average respondent sees the unemployment rate rising to 4.5% next year and gross domestic product coming in just below 1%, or about half of potential, showing that all is not rosy with the forecast and that an economic slowdown remains the baseline forecast for the group.
“A softening in hiring, income growth, and confidence all point to reduced consumer and business spending,” says Joel Naroff of Naroff Advisors.
But Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, writes in: “The U.S. consumer has proven itself a worthy adversary to everything the Fed has dealt it in its fight against inflation. The key is for a ‘Rocky’ ending, with the consumer still standing and able to leave the ring and heal, once the Fed rings the final bell and starts to cut rates.”
Inflation is forecast to decline on average to 2.7% by the end of next year, down from an expected year-end level of 3.2% for the consumer price index. About a third of respondents forecast the Fed will hit its 2% inflation target next year, 37% say it will happen in 2025 and 28% say it will happen after 2025 or never.
“For the FOMC in 2024, 3.5% inflation is acceptable, recession is not,” says Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard. “With 61% of adults owning equities, the highest since 2008, the Fed is not going to sacrifice faith in equities on the altar of 2% inflation.” Fed officials have insisted they will continue to pursue 2% as their inflation target.
Another wild card for next year is whether the Fed ends quantitative tightening in which it has been reducing its balance sheet to tighten monetary policy by allowing the bonds on its balance sheet to mature without replacing them. On average, respondents see the Fed halting QT in November 2024. But that average masks a wide disparity in views, with 55% saying it will happen in 2024 (evenly divided between the first and second half of the year), 30% saying it will happen in 2025 or later and 13% saying they don’t know.
The Fed is seen stopping QT with its balance sheet at $6.2 trillion, compared with the current level of $7.7 trillion and with bank reserves at $2.6 trillion, down from the current level of $3.4 trillion. At $95 billion a month in QT, that implies another eight or nine months of QT to reduce bank reserves to the average expected level. Fed officials have not specified a level, but respondents believe they could announce an end to QT as soon as August and will likely taper QT, or gradually reduce the amount of runoff, before bringing it to an end. When the Fed announces the end of QT, 56% believe it will also say that it will allow all of its mortgage and agency-backed securities to roll off of its balance sheet, 15% say it won’t and 29% do not know.
Respondents to the CNBC Fed Survey see the S&P rising above 5,000 for the first time, on average, but not until the end of 2025. They forecast only a modest gain through 2024 of less than 2% from the current level to 4,696. But much depends on the economic growth: 47% see stocks as overpriced if there’s a soft landing, compared with 91% who say stocks are overpriced if there’s a recession.
Subodh Kumar, president, Subodh Kumar & Associates, sees the market in a period of limbo, unable to break out either way: “The equity markets … appear neither able to reach beyond the highs set at year-end 2021 nor do they appear to be willing to sustain a classical correction,” he wrote.
Barry Knapp, managing partner at Ironsides Macroeconomics, says, “Equities are expecting a ‘V’ shaped earnings recovery, an outcome that is unlikely with contracting bank credit.”
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Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried’s public trial in a New York court ended with the jury finding him guilty on all seven charges on Nov. 3, including two counts of wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, one count of securities fraud, one count of commodities fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy. He will return to court for sentencing by Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 28, 2024. Government prosecutors will recommend a sentence, but Kaplan will have the final say.
Bankman-Fried’s crimes each carry a maximum sentence of five to 20 years in prison, with the wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges carrying a maximum 20-year sentence. In a press conference outside the court, United States Attorney Damian Williams called Bankman-Fried’s crimes “a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto” and one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.
Meanwhile, the current claims pricing of FTX has reached a maximum of 57%, partly due to the valuation of artificial intelligence (AI) companies that the now-bankrupt crypto exchange previously invested in. FTX claims value has jumped to the highest spot when compared with other bankrupt crypto firms, such as Celsius with 35–40%, Genesis with about 50%, Alameda Research with 10% and Three Arrows Capital with only 7–9%.
FTX has also requested the bankruptcy court in Delaware allow it to sell certain key trust fund assets, including from crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments and custody service provider Bitwise, valued at around $744 million. The latest request by FTX debtors for the sale of trust assets comes after the court had earlier approved the liquidation of nearly $3.4 billion in crypto assets.
U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order establishing new standards for AI safety and security. Biden’s order stated it is building off previous actions taken, including AI safety commitments from 15 leading companies in the industry. The new standards have six primary points, along with plans for the ethical use of AI in the government, privacy practices for citizens and steps for protecting consumer privacy.
The first standard requires developers of the most powerful AI system to share safety test results and “critical information” with the government. Secondly, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will develop standardized tools and tests for ensuring AI’s safety, security and trustworthiness. The administration also aims to protect against the risk of AI usage to engineer “dangerous biological materials” through new biological synthesis screening standards.
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Rules for crypto asset promotion that came into force in the United Kingdom on Oct. 8 have led to some confusion, judging from the low level of compliance. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) responded with additional guidance for crypto firms to help them fall into line. The new 32-page guidance does not create new obligations for crypto firms, but the authors noted that it reflected a new “secondary international competitiveness objective” in addition to addressing its expectations for firms’ domestic behavior. The guidance section of the text emphasized key segments of the rules and other pertinent legal documents. The second section gives detailed answers to questions submitted during the consultation phase.
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The Swiss National Bank (SNB), six commercial banks and the SIX Swiss Exchange will work together to pilot the issuance of wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in the nation, officially known as the Swiss franc wCBDC. The pilot project dedicated to wholesale CBDC, named Helvetia Phase III, will test the efficacy of a Swiss franc wCBDC in settling digital securities transactions. The pilot builds on the findings of the first two phases — Helvetia Phases I and II — conducted by the BIS Innovation Hub, the SNB and SIX. The Swiss wCBDC pilot project will be hosted on SDX and use the infrastructure of Swiss Interbank Clearing. According to the announcement, the pilot will run from December 2023 to June 2024.
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For the past 22 years, national pollster Gallup has surveyed retirees to gauge their reliance on Social Security income to make ends meet. In each of these years, anywhere from 80% to 90% of then-current retirees noted that their Social Security benefit comprises a “major” or “minor” part of their monthly income.
Considering how important Social Security is to current retirees and the key role it’s likely to play in keeping future generations of retired workers out of poverty, there’s arguably nothing more important than deciding when to begin taking your Social Security benefit. And making this decision begins with understanding how your monthly benefit is calculated.
Image source: Getty Images.
While there are certain elements that could alter what retirees ultimately get to keep of their payout (e.g., the federal taxation of benefits and penalties for certain early filers), there are four factors used by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to calculate what you’ll receive each month from the program. Assuming you’ve earned the 40 requisite lifetime credits to receive a retired-worker benefit, these four factors are your:
The first two components, work history and earnings history, take into account how long you’ve worked and the amount you’ve earned each year (wages and salary, but not investment income). As you might imagine, more earned income will almost certainly result in a bigger Social Security check.
The caveat is that the SSA will account for your 35 highest-earning, inflation-adjusted years when calculating your Social Security benefit. Every year less than 35 worked will result in a $0 being factored into your calculation. If you have any aspirations of maximizing your payout, you’ll need to work a minimum of 35 years.
The third factor, your full retirement age, is solely determined by your birth year and represents the age you become eligible to receive 100% of your retired-worker benefit. A majority of the current labor force was born in or after 1960, which equates to a full retirement age of 67.
The fourth factor, and the one capable of meaningfully altering how much you’ll receive each month or during your lifetime from Social Security, is your claiming age. Retired-worker checks can be taken as early as age 62, but as you can see in the table, patience is encouraged. For every year an eligible beneficiary waits to take their benefit, their monthly payout can increase by up to 8%, through age 69.
| Birth Year | Age 62 | Age 63 | Age 64 | Age 65 | Age 66 | Age 67 | Age 68 | Age 69 | Age 70 |
| 1943-1954 | 75% | 80% | 86.7% | 93.3% | 100% | 108% | 116% | 124% | 132% |
| 1955 | 74.2% | 79.2% | 85.6% | 92.2% | 98.9% | 106.7% | 114.7% | 122.7% | 130.7% |
| 1956 | 73.3% | 78.3% | 84.4% | 91.1% | 97.8% | 105.3% | 113.3% | 121.3% | 129.3% |
| 1957 | 72.5% | 77.5% | 83.3% | 90% | 96.7% | 104% | 112% | 120% | 128% |
| 1958 | 71.7% | 76.7% | 82.2% | 88.9% | 95.6% | 102.7% | 110.7% | 118.7% | 126.7% |
| 1959 | 70.8% | 75.8% | 81.1% | 87.8% | 94.4% | 101.3% | 109.3% | 117.3% | 125.3% |
| 1960 or later | 70% | 75% | 80% | 86.7% | 93.3% | 100% | 108% | 116% | 124% |
Data source: Social Security Administration. Table by author.
As you can see from the percentages in the table, there’s a lot riding on your claiming decision. The challenge is there’s no concrete formula that’ll tell us which age is best to begin taking benefits. Without knowing our expiration date, there’s always going to be some guesswork involved.
Every claiming age, from 62 through 70, has its advantages and drawbacks. In the years to come, ages 65, 67, and 70 are all likely to become increasingly popular claiming choices. Here’s a breakdown of what each of these three claiming ages offers retirees, along with potential drawbacks.
The all-important question is, which of these claiming ages — 65, 67, or 70 — is going to be best for a majority of future retirees? The answer to that question can be found in an extensive study released four years ago.
Image source: Getty Images.
In 2019, Washington, D.C.- based financial planning company United Income released a study that examined the claiming decisions of approximately 20,000 retirees using the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study. The goal of this analysis was to extrapolate these claims and determine whether retirees made an optimal choice. For United Income, “optimal” means a claiming decision that resulted in the highest possible lifetime income, which may not necessarily correlate with the highest monthly income.
What researchers at United income found was a glaring disparity between actual claims and optimal claims. Whereas the bulk of the 20,000 claimants studied chose to take their Social Security benefit prior to reaching full retirement age (ergo, accepting a permanent monthly payout reduction), the lion’s share of optimal claims occurred at or after full retirement age.
More specifically, United Income found that a jaw-dropping 57% of claimants would have optimized their lifetime income by taking benefits at age 70. Although age 67 was the second-most-optimal claiming age — around 10% of retirees would have benefited most from an age 67 claim — it’s well behind age 70 in terms of maximizing lifetime income. Meanwhile, age 65 came in behind ages 66 through 70 in terms of optimized lifetime benefits.
Keep in mind that there are instances where earlier filings make sense. For example, a person with one or more chronic health conditions who could have their life expectancy shortened may receive more lifetime income with an earlier claim.
Nevertheless, United Income’s extensive study suggests that a majority of future retirees would be better off financially by waiting until age 70 to begin receiving their Social Security check.
Only top earners, who hold the highest share of their wealth in investments, may be financially on track for retirement in the U.S., according to Vanguard research, underscoring how investing can be key to building wealth.
Comparing four cohorts of workers along an income distribution, Vanguard found only earners in the 95th percentile are projected to sustainably meet their spending needs. While having larger incomes played a significant role in their retirement readiness, Vanguard also noted higher-income workers were more likely to hold a bigger portion of their assets in stocks and bonds, as well as have access to and participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans with investment options to help them reach retirement savings goals.
“Long-term investing allows you to compound your wealth more effectively than savings,” financial advisor and founder of Bone Fide Wealth Douglas Boneparth told Investopedia.
By contrast, workers in the bottom half of the income distribution were more likely to hold a greater share of their assets in cash, and amid rising economic uncertainty, more than half of Americans (54%) say they are keeping more money in cash due to worries about a potential recession, a recent Allianz survey found.
“Stocks and bonds are riskier than cash in the short term, but these assets can also be expected, on average, to deliver higher returns,” Vanguard noted, suggesting that greater participation in capital markets “could put them in a better position to meet their retirement needs.”
However, Boneparth cautions “taking advantage of those opportunities can be difficult” if you don’t have a cash reserve, which could be difficult to build for lower income households. “It depends on how prepared for uncertainty you are,” he said.
Retail executives over the past year have talked a lot about “shrink” — or the losses they take due to theft, fraud or employee error — amid a flood of headlines about sometimes violent organized thefts at stores. But results from a retail-industry survey released Tuesday found the metric rose only modestly last year.
The report from the National Retail Federation, a retail industry group, found that the average shrink rate in 2022 crept higher to 1.6% from 1.4% in the prior year, when calculated as a share of sales. The figure from 2022 is in line with those seen in 2020 and 2019.
Still, the losses amounted to billions of dollars — $112.1 billion, up from $93.9 billion in 2021 — according to the report. And the report said that retailers were increasingly concerned about the violence of those crimes.
“Far beyond the financial impact of these crimes, the violence and concerns over safety continue to be the priority for all retailers, regardless of size or category,” David Johnston, the NRF’s vice president for asset protection and retail operations, said in a statement.
The NRF, working with the Loss Prevention Research Council — a research group founded by some of the nation’s biggest retailers — surveyed people in the industry who work in loss-prevention and asset protection. The report contained responses or information from 177 retail brands. The survey was distributed in May, June and July.
The report was published the same day that Target Corp.
TGT,
said it would close nine stores across four states next month, citing theft and dangers to employees.
“In this case, we cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance,” Target said in a statement.
The chain joins other retailers sounding the alarm about retail theft and closing stores, amid what executives have described as a spike in organized retail theft, or theft with the intent of reselling the goods. However, executives’ takes on earnings calls have differed slightly, and retailers are contending with other issues — like the fallout from inflation — that have hit financials.
Also see: Costco CFO says inventory ‘in good shape,’ thefts have not ‘dramatically’ increased as earnings top estimates
The fight over theft has played out, perhaps predictably, on partisan lines, with some blaming what they say are lax crime policies in large cities. But other analysts point to changes in the flow of foot traffic through population centers since the pandemic, and say the data is often too squishy and subjective to make any hard calls about the state of crime — and whether it’s rising or falling, particularly at retailers — in a particular area.
More than two-thirds of the retailers surveyed by the NRF “said they were seeing even more violence and aggression” from organized retail theft compared with a year ago. Twenty-eight percent reported being “forced” to close a specific store location, the report said, while 45% said they cut operating hours, and 30% said they reduced or changed an in-store product selection as a result of retail crime.
“The types of products shoplifters are targeting may not be based solely on price point,” the National Retail Federation said.
“Products can range from high-price, high-fashion items to everyday products that have a fast resale capability,” the group said. “While ORC groups have traditionally targeted specific items or types of goods, that list has expanded to new categories like outerwear, batteries, energy drinks, designer footwear and kitchen accessories.”