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Supply Chain by the Numbers

June 12, 2026

Supply Chain by the Numbers for June 12, 2026

Strong Retail Sales Growth in May. Robot Maker gets Big Venture Bucks. Huge Supply Chain Worker Shortage Coming, Accenture Finds. Insurance Costs Walloping Truckers’ Bottom Lines


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7.19%
That was the strong year-over-year growth in US retail sales in May according to the CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, powered by Affinity Solutions, released by the National Retail Federation this week. The data also show retail sales rose for the eighth consecutive month in May despite high gas prices and ongoing inflation. Total retail sales, excluding automobile dealers and gasoline stations, were also up 0.42% seasonally adjusted month-over-month. Unlike survey-based numbers collected by the Census Bureau, the Retail Monitor uses actual, anonymized credit and debit card purchase data compiled by Affinity Solutions and does not need to be revised monthly or annually.

1.34 Million

That is the number of new workers that Accenture estimates companies in the United States (+19%) in their supply chains over the next ten years. But at the same time, the labor market will only offer 221,000 additional professionals (+3.2%) able to take on these roles. This leaves a gap of over 1.1 million jobs that could go unfilled, as Accenture writes in its most recent supply chain workforce report. Accenture based its projections on a model built on data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and economic projections from Oxford Economics. It covers 15 supply chain occupations, representing approximately 90% of core US supply chain employment.



$200 Million
That’s how much venture capital Industrial robotics producer Standard Bot said this week that it has raised to expand its manufacturing footprint on New York’s Long Island, increasing its ability to design, assemble, and deploy American-made robots. Standard Bots makes AI-native robot arms and industrial humanoids that require no code to program for fast deployment and ease of maintenance across a range of applications including machining, welding, palletizing, grinding, fastening, dispensing, assembly, and inspection.

10.2

That is the effective cost in cents per mile that US truckers were paying for commercial auto liability insurance at the end 2014, according to a new report from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), which targeted a growing financial pain point for carriers. From 2021 to 2024, liability insurance premium costs rose by 18.6% – outpacing consumer inflation by 5.4 percentage points – at the same time that heavy-duty truck-involved crash rates fell by 2.6% industry-wide, the ATRI research found. The research also confirms that a sharp rise in crash claims expenses fueled this rise in insurance costs: among respondents, per-mile liability losses rose by an average of 33.1% over the same period. The report includes a variety of additional benchmarks for fleets to evaluate trends and assess their own risk management approach, such as coverage limits, percent of revenue spent on insurance, and deductible or self-insurance levels by fleet size.

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