Evelyn Reynolds

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    Retail Group Retracts Startling Claim About ‘Organized’ Shoplifting

    The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say.A national lobbying group has retracted its startling estimate that “organized retail crime” was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021, a figure that helped amplify claims that the United States was experiencing a nationwide wave of shoplifting.The group, the National Retail Federation, edited that claim last week from a widely cited report issued in April, after the trade publication Retail Dive revealed that faulty data had been used to arrive at the inaccurate figure.The retraction comes as retail chains like Target continue to claim that they are the victims of large shoplifting operations that have cut into profits, forcing them to close stores or inconvenience customers by locking products away.The claims have been fueled by widely shared videos of a few instances of brazen shoplifters, including images of masked groups smashing windows and grabbing high-end purses and cellphones. But the data show this impression of rampant criminality was a mirage.In fact, retail theft has been lower this year in most of the country than it was a few years ago, according to police data. Some exceptions, including New York City, exist. But in most major cities, shoplifting incidents have fallen 7 percent since 2019.Organized retail crime, in which multiple individuals steal products from several stores to later sell on the black market, is a real phenomenon, said Trevor Wagener, the chief economist at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, who has conducted research on retail data. But he said organized groups were likely responsible for just about 5 percent of the store merchandise that disappeared from 2016 to 2020.He emphasized that there’s “a lot of uncertainty and imprecision” in measuring losses, because it is difficult to parse out what is shoplifting and what is organized crime.Mr. Wagener testified in Congress in June about the discrepancy in the National Retail Federation’s report.Even as it retracted the figure and revised the report, the federation, which has more than 17,000 member companies, insisted in an emailed statement that its focus on the problem was appropriate.“We stand behind the widely understood fact that organized retail crime is a serious problem impacting retailers of all sizes and communities across our nation,” the statement said. “At the same time, we recognize the challenges the retail industry and law enforcement have with gathering and analyzing an accurate and agreed-upon set of data.”At issue is “total annual shrink” — the industry term for the value of merchandise that disappears from stores without being paid for, through theft, damage and inventory tracking mistakes.Mary McGinty, a spokeswoman for the federation, said the error was caused by an analyst from K2 Integrity, an advisory firm that helped produce the report.The analyst, who was not named, linked a 2021 National Retail Federation survey with a quote from Ben Dugan, the former president of the advocacy group Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, who said in Senate testimony in 2021 that organized retail crime “accounts for $45 billion in annual losses for retailers.”Mr. Dugan was citing the federation’s 2016 National Retail Security Survey, which was actually referring to the overall cost of shrink in 2015 — not the amount lost to just organized retail crime, Ms. McGinty said.Alec Karakatsanis, a civil rights lawyer who has studied and critiqued how the media has covered organized retail crime, said that the retraction underscored how some news organizations, which have extensively covered the issue of shoplifting, were “used as a tool by certain vested interests to gin up a lot of fear about this issue when, in fact, it was pretty clear all along that the facts didn’t add up.”One of the most prominent examples came in October 2021, when Walgreens said it would close five stores in San Francisco, citing repeated instances of organized shoplifting. The company’s decision had come months after a video seen millions of times showed a man, garbage bag in hand, openly stealing products from a Walgreens as others watched.But an October 2021 analysis by The San Francisco Chronicle showed that Police Department data on shoplifting did not support Walgreen’s explanation for the store closings.Eventually, Walgreens retreated from its claims. In January, an executive at the company said that Walgreens might have overstated the effects on its business, saying: “Maybe we cried too much last year.”Mr. Karakatsanis said the exaggerated narrative of widespread shoplifting was weaponized by the retail industry as it lobbied Congress to pass bills that would regulate online retailers, which they claim is where much of the stolen product ends up.Commentators and politicians have seized on the issue. Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California, responded to reports of large-scale thefts in the state with a call for tough prosecution of shoplifters and a plan to invest millions of dollars to fight “organized retail theft.” Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, signed a bill last year aimed at retail theft, and former President Donald J. Trump called for violence, telling Republican activists in California this year that the police should shoot shoplifters as they are leaving a store.Mr. Wagener, the chief economist at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said that the National Retail Federation’s report in April immediately stuck out to him as wrong. The error was troubling, he said, because the federation has long been viewed as a trusted provider of data for the industry.What made the federation’s mistake even more surprising, Mr. Wagener said, was how starkly the figure contrasted to the group’s own previous findings.In 2020, the federation said in a report that organized retail crime cost retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales — a number that would point nowhere near the roughly 50 percent claim made in the April report.Another National Retail Federation survey showed that all external theft — including thefts unrelated to organized retail crime — accounted for 37 percent of shrink, a figure that would still be billions of dollars less than the incorrect estimate of 50 percent made in April.“It would be a bit like the census claiming that nearly half of the U.S. population lives in the state of Rhode Island,” Mr. Wagener said. More

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    Unemployment among Asian workers and Black men rises in November while the overall rate declines

    The overall unemployment rate declined 0.2% to 3.7% last month, against a forecast that it would hold steady at 3.9%.
    On the other hand, Asian Americans saw a 0.4 percentage-point jump in the unemployment rate to 3.5%.
    The unemployment rate for Black Americans — the demographic with the highest jobless percentage in the U.S. — held steady last month at 5.8%.

    Commuters arrive at the Oculus Center in Manhattan, New York City, on Nov. 17, 2022.
    Spencer Platt | Getty Images

    The labor market deteriorated for both Asian and Black workers in November, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
    The overall unemployment rate declined 0.2% to 3.7% last month, against a forecast that it would hold steady at 3.9%. Overall, the labor force participation rate ticked up to 62.8% alongside a surge of 532,000 workers into the labor force.

    For white Americans, the jobless rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 3.3%. Hispanic Americans also saw their unemployment rate slip 0.2 percentage points to 4.6%.

    On the other hand, Asian Americans saw a 0.4 percentage-point jump in the unemployment rate to 3.5%. This was accompanied by a decline in the participation rate for Asian workers to 65% from 65.3% in October.
    “That uptick in unemployment is not because more Asian workers are flooding into the labor market, feeling optimistic about getting jobs. It’s actually accompanied by a fall in participation as well as a fall in employment,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNBC.

    The unemployment rate for Black Americans — the demographic with the highest jobless percentage in the U.S. — held steady last month at 5.8%. The jobless rate for Black men age 20 or older spiked more than 1 percentage point to 6.4% from October’s 5.3%. That said, those gains came as the participation rate for this cohort increased to 69.2% from 67.5%.
    “The rise in unemployment is because more workers are optimistic, coming back in or entering the labor market for the first time, and many of them are finding jobs. And many of them are not, which is why the unemployment rate went up,” Gould added.

    Black Americans were hit harder by business shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate for Black workers peaked at 16.8% in 2020, versus the overall unemployment rate’s April 2020 high of 14.7%.
    Gould added the caveat that the Asian workers in the survey made up a relatively smaller demographic group, and that both of these series are incredibly volatile from month to month.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

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    Amazon Is Cracking Down on Union Organizing, Workers Say

    More than a year and a half after Amazon workers on Staten Island voted to form the company’s first union in the United States, the company appears to be taking a harder line toward labor organizing, disciplining workers and even firing one who had been heavily involved in the union campaign.The disciplinary actions come at a time when union organizers appear to be gaining ground at a major air hub operated by Amazon in Kentucky, where they say they have collected union authorization cards from at least one-quarter of hourly employees. Workers must typically demonstrate at least 30 percent support to prompt a union election.In disciplining the employees, Amazon has raised questions about the extent to which they are free to approach co-workers to persuade them to join a union, a federally protected right. The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has said Amazon is breaking the law through a policy governing the access that off-duty workers have to its facilities, which Amazon invoked in the recent firing. The board is seeking to overturn the policy at an upcoming trial.Lisa Levandowski, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the recent disciplinary actions were strictly a response to rule violations, not to union organizing. “Employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union,” she said.The company’s off-duty access rule is “a lawful, common-sense policy,” she said, “and we look forward to defending our position.”The fired worker, Connor Spence, was a founder of the Amazon Labor Union, which won last year’s election on Staten Island. After a split within the union leadership, Mr. Spence helped start a separate group that sought to pressure the company to negotiate a contract at the warehouse, known as JFK8.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    U.S. payrolls rose 199,000 in November, unemployment rate falls to 3.7%

    Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 199,000 in November, slightly better than the 190,000 Dow Jones estimate and ahead of the October gain of 150,000.
    The unemployment rate declined to 3.7%, compared with the forecast for 3.9%, as the labor force participation rate edged higher.
    Average hourly earnings, a key inflation indicator, increased by 0.4% for the month and 4% from a year ago, close to expectations.
    Health care was the biggest growth industry, adding 77,000. Other big gainers included government (49,000), manufacturing (28,000), and leisure and hospitality (40,000).

    Job creation showed little signs of a letup in November, as payrolls grew even faster than expected and the unemployment rate fell despite signs of a weakening economy.
    Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 199,000 for the month, slightly better than the 190,000 Dow Jones estimate and ahead of the unrevised October gain of 150,000, the Labor Department reported Friday. The numbers were boosted by sizeable gains in government hiring as well as workers returning from strikes in the auto and entertainment industries.

    The unemployment rate declined to 3.7%, compared with the forecast for 3.9%, as the labor force participation rate edged higher to 62.8%. A more encompassing unemployment rate that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time positions for economic reasons fell to 7%, a decline of 0.2 percentage point.
    “The job market continues to be resilient after a year of dodging recession fears,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist at job ratings site Glassdoor. “Really the one concern that we had coming in today’s report was the recent rise in the unemployment rate. So the improvement in unemployment was a welcome relief.”

    The department’s survey of households, used to calculate the unemployment rate, showed much more robust job growth of 747,000 and an addition of 532,000 workers to the labor force.
    Average hourly earnings, a key inflation indicator, increased by 0.4% for the month and 4% from a year ago. The monthly increase was slightly ahead of the 0.3% estimate, but the yearly rate was in line.
    Markets showed mixed reaction to the report, with stock market futures modestly negative while Treasury yields surged.

    “What we wanted was a strong but moderating labor market, and that’s what we saw in the November report,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, noting “healthy job growth, lower unemployment, and decent wage increases. All this points to the labor market reaching a natural equilibrium around 150,000 jobs [per month] next year, which is plenty to continue the expansion, and not enough to trigger a Fed rate hike.”

    Health care was the biggest growth industry, adding 77,000 jobs. Other big gainers included government (49,000), manufacturing (28,000), and leisure and hospitality (40,000).
    Heading into the holiday season, retail lost 38,000 jobs, half of which came from department stores. Transportation and warehousing also showed a decline of 5,000.
    Duration of unemployment fell sharply, dropping to an average 19.4 weeks, the lowest level since February.
    The report comes at a critical time for the U.S. economy.
    Though growth defied widespread expectations for a recession this year, most economists expect a sharp slowdown in the fourth quarter and tepid gains in 2024. Gross domestic product is on pace to rise at just a 1.2% annualized pace in the fourth quarter, according to an Atlanta Fed data gauge, and most economists expect growth of around 1% in 2024.

    Federal Reserve officials are watching the jobs numbers closely as they continue to try to bring down inflation that had been running at a four-decade high but has shown signs of easing.
    Futures markets pricing strongly points to the Fed halting its rate-hiking campaign and beginning to cut next year, though central bank officials have been more circumspect about what lies ahead. Pricing had been pointing to the first reduction happening in March, though that swung following the jobs report, pushing a higher probability for the first expected cut now to May.
    The Fed will hold its two-day policy meeting next week, its last of the year, and investors will be looking for clues about how officials view the economy.
    Policymakers have been aiming to bring the economy in for a soft landing that likely would feature modest growth, a sustainable pace of wage increases and inflation at least receding back to the Fed’s 2% target.
    Consumers hold the key to the U.S. economy, and by most measures they’ve held up fairly well.
    Retail sales fell 0.1% in October but were still up 2.5% from the previous year. The numbers are not adjusted for inflation, so they indicate that consumers at least have nearly kept pace with higher prices. A gauge the Fed uses showed inflation running at a 3.5% annual rate in October, excluding food and energy prices.
    However, there is some worry that the end of Covid-era stimulus payments and the continued pressure from higher interest rates could eat into spending.
    Net household wealth fell by about $1.3 trillion in the third quarter to about $151 trillion, owing largely to declines in the stock market, according to Fed data released this week. Household debt rose 2.5%, close to the pace where it has been for the past several quarters.
    Fed officials have been watching wage data closely. Rising prices tend to feed into wages, potentially creating a spiral that can be difficult to control.
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    Here’s where the jobs are for November 2023 — in one chart

    The U.S. job market once again surprised to the upside in November, as strong growth in health care and a few other sectors helped the economy add nearly 200,000 jobs and push the unemployment rate down.
    Health care and social assistance added more than 93,000 jobs for the month, making it the top category for job growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Government jobs grew by 49,000, while leisure and hospitality added 40,000 jobs.

    The job gains for health care and social assistance rise to 99,000 when including private education, as some economists do.
    Much of the labor market story over the past two years has been tied to the economic rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic, but the health-care growth appears to be part of a longer-term trend.
    “We’re back to 2019 in some ways. If prior to the pandemic, you would have said, ‘Hey, health care’s going to be one of the largest sources of hiring in late 2023,’ no one would have been surprised by that, I think. There are very long-term structural tailwinds here,” Nick Bunker, director of economic research at Indeed Hiring Lab, told CNBC.
    Bunker also pointed out that health care is less sensitive to higher interest rates or other cyclical factors that affect the U.S. labor market.
    Another key part of the jobs growth story in November was returning strike workers.

    Manufacturing employment rose by 28,000, helped by the 30,000 jobs gained in motor vehicles and parts as the United Auto Workers strike ended. The information sector was also bolstered by the addition of 17,000 jobs from the motion picture and sound recording industries, as Hollywood production restarts after the actors’ strike was resolved.
    Retail trade was an outlier area to the downside, losing more than 38,000 jobs. The sector is roughly flat year over year in terms of total jobs, according to the Labor Department.
    “I’m not spooked by it right now. … If you look at the nonseasonally adjusted gains for that sector, it’s roughly in line with what we saw last year. So maybe the seasonal adjustments need to catch up or change. I think we’ve seen this with a variety of data,” Bunker said.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

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    How Has the Economy Affected You? We Want to Know.

    The Times’s economics team is looking for reader input on what you’re going through financially and what you see in your community.The economics team at The New York Times covers everything having to do with your financial well-being: jobs, inflation, wages, taxes, inequality, government regulations, the social safety net, small businesses, large businesses, the cost of college, housing, transportation and more.We can’t do it well without understanding what Americans experience in their daily lives. That’s why we’d love for you to tell us what you’re dealing with, and what you think needs more attention.We read all submissions, often write stories inspired by them and always reach back out to ask more questions and make sure we’ve got the details right before we use them in an article. We won’t publish anything without your explicit permission, and won’t use your contact information for any other purpose or share it outside our newsroom. If you would like to submit information anonymously, please visit our tips page. More

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    DHL Workers at Kentucky Air Cargo Hub Go on Strike

    Workers who load and unload cargo planes at DHL’s hub near Cincinnati walked out after months of negotiations failed to produce a contract.More than 1,100 workers at DHL Express’s global air cargo hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport went on strike on Thursday after months of failed negotiations with the parcel carrier.A group of DHL workers at the hub who load and unload planes voted in April to unionize with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has been in contract negotiations with the company since July. The union has filed more than 20 unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board since then, accusing the company of retaliation against organized workers. Teamsters Local 100, which represents the unionized workers, voted to authorize a strike on Sunday.“The company forced this work stoppage, but DHL has the opportunity to right this wrong by respecting our members and coming to terms on a strong contract,” Bill Davis, president of Local 100, said in a statement.DHL Express is the U.S. unit of the world’s largest logistics company, Deutsche Post, but accounts for only 2.3 percent of the market in the United States in package volume, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. As a German company, it is not able to ship between domestic airports within the United States, so it has to contract out those services and instead focuses on handling international shipments.A DHL spokesman said the company “was fully prepared for this anticipated tactic and has enacted contingency plans” like redirecting shipments to avoid Cincinnati and adding replacement staff members.The company noted that roughly 4,000 employees at the facility were still on the job. It said it did not “anticipate any significant disruptions to our service performance.”“Unfortunately, the Teamsters decided to try and influence these negotiations and pressure the company to agree to unreasonable contract terms by taking a job action,” the company spokesman said in a statement.The DHL strike comes at a time of increased tensions in the industry between companies and organized labor.On Thursday, the Teamsters threated to strike at a United Parcel Service facility in Louisville, Ky., accusing the company of engaging in “similar practices to disrespect and abuse our members in the same state” by laying off administrative workers who had just voted to unionize. The union threatened to strike at UPS as well if it “doesn’t get its act together” by Monday.UPS narrowly averted a strike over the summer after contentious negotiations with the Teamsters, which threatened to halt operations for the country’s largest parcel service.The facility where DHL workers are striking is directly in front of Amazon’s Air Hub, where a unionization effort is underway. Workers there have accused Amazon of illegally impeding organizing efforts. More

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    China vows to ‘moderately’ strengthen fiscal policy to bolster economic recovery

    China’s Politburo said Friday that it would continue to implement “proactive” fiscal policies and “prudent” monetary policies next year, in a bid to bolster domestic demand.
    China also pledged to effectively enhance “economic vitality,” to prevent and defuse risks and to consolidate and enhance the upward trend of an ailing recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.
    Demand for Chinese goods has fallen this year as global growth slows.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping chairs a symposium on advancing the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta and delivers an important speech in east China’s Shanghai, Nov. 30, 2023.
    Xinhua News Agency | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

    China’s top decision-making body of the ruling Communist Party on Friday said that the country’s fiscal policy “must be moderately strengthened” to stimulate economic recovery, according to state-run news outlet Xinhua.
    China’s Politburo said it would continue to implement “proactive” fiscal policies and “prudent” monetary policies next year, in a bid to bolster domestic demand.

    Chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Politburo’s Friday meeting analyzed the economic work to be undertaken in 2024. It pledged to effectively enhance “economic vitality,” to prevent and defuse risks and to consolidate and enhance the upward trend of an ailing recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.
    China’s Politburo said that “proactive fiscal policy must be moderately strengthened, improve quality and efficiency, and the prudent monetary policy must be flexible, appropriate, precise and effective.”

    Lost momentum

    Demand for Chinese goods has fallen this year as global growth slows, stoking concerns about Beijing’s ability to mount a robust post-pandemic recovery. Momentum has taken a hit from a slew of factors, including the country’s beleaguered property market, sluggish global growth and geopolitical tensions.
    HSBC Chief Asia Economist Frederic Neumann told CNBC on Thursday that the Chinese economy is unlikely to be bolstered by further fiscal stimulus and still has a “steep hill to climb,” even after a surprise pickup in exports.
    Exports in U.S. dollar terms rose by 0.5% year-on-year in November, defying expectations for a 1.1% decline among analysts polled by Reuters. Imports in U.S. dollar terms fell by 0.6% over the 12 months, well below a consensus forecast of a 3.3% increase.

    Economists have noted that external demand in China is still relatively weak and warned that policy support that focuses purely on the supply side will likely not be enough to achieve lasting results.
    — CNBC’s Elliot Smith contributed to this report. More