Responses to Globalization : US Textile and Apparel Workers

The last quarter of the 20th century was not especially kind to the US textile and apparel industries.

Thousands of plants closed their doors and almost three quarters of a million jobs disappeared.

While these changes were occurring, these industries were facing intensified international competition and a more global production structure.

This study provides a fresh analysis of how plants in these industries have responded to globalization.

The author examines plant-level data to reveal both the grim news, yet the many encouraging and economically healthy responses that would otherwise remain unseen if only industry-level data were analyzed: as international competition intensified in the apparel and textile industries and as plants closed and jobs disappeared, surviving plants became markedly more productive.

Far from exiting these industries bruised and battered, US firms responded by re-organizing the way they produce (in apparel) and adopting new technologies (in textiles) resulting in internationally competitive and more agile industries.