United States Of America : Apparel Employment Drops to Record Low

Apparel employment, which has been on the decline for the past three decades, reached a milestone in April, dropping below 500,000 for the first time in history, according to the Labor Department’s employment report released last Friday.

In April alone, apparel manufacturers slashed 7,000 seasonally adjusted jobs from payrolls to employ 495,000 workers. Compared with April 2002, the industry lost 28,000 workers.

Apparel employment, on a seasonally adjusted basis, peaked in May 1973 at 1.445 million, according to Labor numbers and has lost nearly 1 million workers in the past 30 years. “For the past two decades, the U.S. has loosened its trade restrictions and a steady flow of apparel manufacturing has left this country and headed to Latin America, China and [sub-Saharan Africa],” said Steve Spiwak, an economist at Retail Forward.

A string of free trade agreements and preferential agreements with Latin American countries, Caribbean countries and sub-Saharan African countries confer duty-and-quota-free treatment on apparel assembled abroad and shipped back to the U.S. Low-cost labor and a skilled labor force have also lured apparel production to all corners of the world.

Meanwhile, the textile industry lost another 6,000 jobs last month to employ 409,000 people. Compared with April 2002, the apparel sector lost 28,000 workers and the textile industry lost 27,000 people.

Department stores slashed 34,000 from payrolls in April while employment in the sector fell by 101,000 jobs year-over-year, at the same time the overall unemployment jumped to 6 percent. It was the biggest monthly seasonally adjusted drop in department store employment since May 2000.

Department store employment stood at 2.474 million in April. Apparel and accessories stores bucked the monthly trend and added 3,000 jobs to payrolls in April to employ 1.16 million workers. But employment was down by 9,000 jobs against April 2002.

General merchandise stores, including department stores and discounters, lost 29,000 jobs last month to employ 2.825 million. General merchandise stores employed 90,000 fewer people compared with April 2002.