ALSO OF INTEREST

The last quarter century has not been kind to the US textile and apparel industries and their workers, as revealed in the comprehensive analysis in this Globalization Balance Sheet study. Yet in this overall grim industrial history, many textile and apparel firms have adapted and reoriented themselves, as have the declining numbers of workers who retained jobs with them. Still, compared with workers elsewhere in the economy, earnings and employment have been slumping for textile and apparel workers. Involuntary dislocation was the dominant dynamic; earnings have been extremely hard to maintain, both absolutely and relative to other manufacturing workers; and personal characteristics—apparel workers especially are older, less educated, and female—set them at special disadvantages. Trends for textile and apparel firms have been less gloomy. Many new plants entered the industry during this period; overall plant-level productivity increased dramatically, and plants where it did so most dramatically were least likely to experience shutdown and layoffs. Based on these patterns, the authors recommend enhanced wage insurance for structurally displaced workers and educational improvements that speed reemployment and accelerate earnings recovery.