Why is there no flooring under the cabinets?

Nosoccermom, I have no idea. We purchased this home recently and the kitchen needed to be redone.

There's two choices for cabinets and flooring:. 1) no flooring under cabinet typically engineered wood floors and they put shims under the cabinet to push it up and equal to floor. When my kitchen was taken out from flood, this is what I had. 2) choose to have flooring thru the entire kitchen and the cabinets sit on top of flooring. I choose to do this even though it was more expensive.

The first choice is more prevalent and typical in my area.

It is typical to shim up cabinets, and like beachem said no flooring under the cabinets is typical in some areas, and flooring under the cabinets is typical in others. The difference between the two is that your shims are going to be thick, and if the floor runs underneath the shims are going to be thin. I lived in a house where the sag in the floor (it was very old) meant that the shims ranged from non-existent to an inch over a relatively short distance.

Thanks everyone. I'm not concerned about there not being any flooring under the cabinets. My concern is with using tiny pieces of wood to shim the cabinets up an entire inch all the way around the entire kitchen. My thought is that the slab should be built up

You're over thinking this.
Perfectly level floors are few and far between, believe it or not, sometimes even in new housing. There will most likely, always be shims. Those "tiny pieces of wood" don't need to be any bigger, since they're flat on the ground. The strength to hold stuff lies in your cabinetry.

Looks like your installer actually took serious time to make certain everything is level, which is totally necessary for your countertops!

Thank you CEF. If this is the correct way then great. I have asked the installer to recheck things as one piece has already come out from under a cabinet

You wouldn't ever want to 'built up' the slab to meet the height of the flooring, it's always either put shims or flooring under the cabinets.

Ghostly, thank you. Do you think these shims are sufficient? Obviously the one that came out was not. I'm off to find my chill pills now

Thank you, Joseph.

Shims under cabinets are a fact we live with. Even though my flooring is thru the entire kitchen and the sub floor then the flooring was level, we still ended up having shims under a couple of cabinets.

The key is to have a perfectly level top for the countertop stones.

The shims are just there to get the cabinets level. Then they are attached to the walls so the shims won't be supporting anything at that point.

Ravencajun, thank you!

The shims are sitting under where the load is bearing on the floor. Larger pieces won't really do anything - as the cab were designed to have all the weight in that area anyway!