So I used to run a retail business, 20 stores and about 150 staff, so I can talk with some personal experience of the change over the last 2 years really. It was employee owned, so the staff had some skin in the game for preventing shoplifting and in all cases were excellent in managing it. The core factor is a drop off in police activity to actually doing something about shoplifting and actually coming out to investigate and an increase in abuse (both verbal and physical) of store staff, meaning challenging any one shoplifting isn't recommended. It's a vicious cycle because the shoplifters know full well that they won't get chased as it's deemed as low level crime, and they can do anything to store staff and know that little action will be taken. The more this happens, then unfortunately the more brazen it becomes. On one site we had a Tesco Express adjacent to us (run down part of the Wirral) and you just saw people walking in and taking beer off the shelf and just walking straight out, not even running as they know no one is even going to stop them.
The financials of between 0.3-0.5% of revenue as shrinkage (retail term for stock loss) from those articles is pretty accurate, but there was definitely increases in shoplifting since 2022. From my own experience and anecdotal feedback is that most shoplifting that we saw was professional shoplifters and have been doing it for some time, as opposed to some recent demand in new criminals coming to the fore.
The main bug for retailers though is definitely the police not doing anything about it or at the minimum coming out to take information. The amount they pay in business rates is significant and for the police to do very little is what's changed here. Any policy that begins to address can only be a good thing, especially for the people on the shop floor.