Employment in L.A. Garment Trade Continues to Shrink
Employment in the Los Angeles garment industry dipped below 100,000 this year for the first time since the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted in 1994, with nearly 13,000 jobs lost since 1997 alone, according to state employment data.
Also, a new analysis of state figures from 1995-1997 has found that the region began losing blue-collar sewing jobs on a large scale earlier than was previously thought. Those job losses were masked by a surge in white-collar employment, such as bilingual managers needed to coordinate foreign production.
Although the new, higher-paying jobs are welcome in an industry undergoing a wrenching transition, most displaced production workers lack the skills to move into those new positions. Nor are these new jobs expected to grow at a rate that will sustain garment-making as L.A.’s leading manufacturing employer.
If Los Angeles is to retain a garment industry of any size, experts say, the region must make investments to upgrade the skills of production workers. That view is shared by a number of researchers and industry leaders, who said Los Angeles until now has taken a “low road” approach, relying on an abundance of cheap low-skilled labor to compete with developing countries.
“The real option that has to be seized right now is a significant upgrading in technology and training,” said Raul Hinojosa, director of the North American Integration and Development Center at UCLA. “It’s really a question of whether people are interested in quick profits or a longer-term strategy.”
Until just a few years ago, Southern California appeared better insulated than other regions against the global forces that have decimated the U.S. garment and textile industries. Manufacturers and contractors here specialize in trendy juniors’ fashions and lightning-fast turnaround times, giving them a critical edge over foreign producers.
L.A. County’s garment manufacturing employment defied the national trend and kept climbing until 1997, when it topped out at nearly 112,000 workers. But new research shows that a surge in white-collar positions helped to mask previously unrecognized losses in production jobs, which traditionally have accounted for the lion’s share of local apparel employment.
State employment figures normally address only overall employment in an industry. But occasionally the state examines what’s happening to specific job categories. Data from one such study show that Los Angeles actually lost 13,140 sewing machine operator jobs between 1995 and 1997, even as overall employment in the garment industry grew.
Those production jobs were lost as local manufacturers took advantage of the newly implemented NAFTA agreement to move production south of the border, according to Judi Kessler, an economic sociologist with the Center for U.S.-Mexican studies at UC San Diego, who studied the data. Kessler said sewing operator positions, which represented 60% of L.A. apparel employment in 1995, held just a 40% share by 1997.
“I was amazed,” Kessler said. “We’ve lost a lot more sewing jobs than the overall employment data would suggest.”
Although Southern California is likely to retain some local production, the shift offshore is accelerating. A recent survey of 81 local garment manufacturers completed by Kessler and Linda Wong, work force development director for the Community Development Technologies Center, showed that 56% of the firms surveyed now produce some garments in Mexico. Nearly all of them made the shift after NAFTA was implemented in 1994, and nearly 40% plan to increase their Mexico production.
In contrast to losses in local production jobs, Kessler found that non-production textile employment surged by nearly 18,000 jobs between 1995 and 1997. Those positions run the gamut from entry-level data-entry clerks to design professionals and quality control managers. In addition, increasingly global production of garment production has put a premium on employees with import/export skills and NAFTA experience. The California Apparel News is littered with employment ads for local companies seeking a “global trade manager” or an “import production specialist.”
However, it’s clear that this new crop of white-collar jobs isn’t growing fast enough to offset job losses in apparel production. Overall L.A. County apparel employment dropped to an estimated 99,000 this year.
That shift has had devastating consequences for front-line workers such as Juana Lozada. With piece rates falling and steady work harder to find, she sometimes sews 12 hours a day, at finger-numbing speeds, for about $150 a week. Armed with only a third-grade education and no English skills, Lozada and thousands of immigrant production workers like her are ill-equipped to move into new white-collar positions. Many garment workers also lack legal U.S. residency.
The growing skills mismatch worries industry observers such as Wong, who says policymakers have shown more interest in creating high-tech jobs than sustaining old-line industries such as apparel.
“It has been labeled a sweatshop industry,” Wong said. “The irony is that you have all these low-wage workers who desperately need their skills upgraded, but nobody wants to touch them with a 10-foot pole.”
Work by Wong and others is helping to change those old attitudes. The state of California’s Employment Training Panel recently granted $300,000 in training funds to help local garment contractors train new production workers and improve the skills of existing employees.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles-based Stitches Technology Sewn Products Job Creation Center Inc. opened its doors in April. Funded by a federal grant and industry donations, the center is training former welfare recipients as sewing operators and providing them with intensive English classes. More important, says founder Clotee McAfee, the center is helping trainees chart a career in the garment trade and strive for the upward mobility that has been sorely lacking in the local industry.
Whether these fledgling efforts are enough to sustain the local industry remains to be seen. “A lot of workers just aren’t going to acquire the right skills fast enough,” Kessler said. “It’s just not realistic.”
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Jobs Unraveling
Increasing use of workers in Mexico and Asia has led to a decline in local apparel industry employment, mostly in sewing jobs. Apparel manufacturing employment in Los Angeles County:
2000 (estimate): 99,000
Source: Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.
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Garment Jobs Moving Overseas
Local garment manufacturers are accelerating their use of foreign production. Percent of Los Angeles County apparel manufacturers who send some of their production to Mexico and Asia:
Sources: Community Development Technologies Center
