Retail bosses are warning that rising levels of shoplifting and violence against staff are deterring young people from entering the sector, deepening the industry’s recruitment crisis.
Jonathan James, owner of James Convenience Retail, which runs around 40 stores under the Select Convenience brand, said fears over safety are making roles less attractive.
“It’s just completely going unchecked and that is having an impact on morale and recruitment,” he explained. “People see in the local paper that shops have been done and staff assaulted. Young people looking for their first job are being told by parents, ‘Do you really want to do that?’”
James said that, for the first time in 25 years, he is designing stores around security and staff protection rather than customer experience.
Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) show incidents of violence and abuse against shopworkers surged by more than 50% in the year to August 2024, rising to over 2,000 incidents per day. Shop theft also hit a record 20 million cases, costing the industry £2.2bn.
The increase has been attributed to the combined effects of the cost-of-living crisis and the rise of organised crime networks targeting stores.
Chris Noice, of the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), said the impact of crime on workers can be “life-changing”: “Retailers and colleagues face theft, abuse, assault, and even threats with weapons. Some shops have had to cut opening hours to protect staff locking up late at night. In the last two years, retailers have spent over half a billion pounds on security, but this must be matched by tougher police action against repeat offenders.”
The government has pledged to crack down on retail crime. Ministers plan to invest £200m in neighbourhood policing and have made assaulting a shop worker a standalone offence. Rules that downgraded thefts of goods worth under £200 have also been scrapped.
Former policing and crime minister Dame Diana Johnson vowed earlier this year that “there will be consequences” for offenders, warning that rising “middle-class shoplifting” by more affluent individuals will also be punished.
For an industry already grappling with labour shortages, high inflation and squeezed margins, rising violence poses yet another hurdle. Unless the government’s measures quickly restore confidence, retailers warn that recruiting young staff could become increasingly difficult – undermining one of Britain’s largest private-sector employers.
