Thieves have stolen $3 billion worth of stuff from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) in the last year, according to the AP. That's enough to make a pretty good size company but it represents less than 1% of its $348.6 billion worth of sales in the last year.
It turns out that Wal-Mart is not the only one suffering from the problem. Theft cost retailers $41.6 billion in 2006, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and the University of Florida. The study found that the theft rate as a percentage of sales rose to 1.61% of sales in 2006 from 1.60% in 2005. So at 0.9%, Wal-Mart is relatively tough to steal from.
Interestingly, it turns out that most retail "slippage" comes from employees. Specifically, employees stole about 47% of the dollars and customers swiped about 32%. Administrative errors accounted for 14%, supplier fraud accounts for 4%, and the remaining 3% is unaccounted for.
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