Changing Site Factors: Clothing

Production of textiles (woven fabrics) and apparel (clothing) is a prominent example of a labor-intensive industry that generally requires less-skilled, low-cost workers. The textile and apparel industry accounts for 6 percent of the dollar value of world manufacturing but a much higher 14 percent of world manufacturing employment, an indicator that it is a labor-intensive industry. The percentage of the world’s women employed in this type of manufacturing is even higher.

Textile and apparel production involves three principal steps:

• Spinning of fibers to make yarn.

• Weaving or knitting of yarn into fabric.

• Assembly of fabric into products.

Spinning, weaving, and sewing are all labor intensive compared to other industries, but the importance of labor varies somewhat among them. As a result, their global distributions are not identical because the three steps are not equally labor intensive.

Spinning

Fibers can be spun from natural or synthetic elements. The principal natural fiber is cotton, and synthetics now account for three-fourths of world thread production. Because it is a labor-intensive industry, spinning is done primarily in low-wage countries. China produces one-fourth and India one-fifth of the world’s cotton thread.

Cotton Spinning

(a) Nearly one-half of world cotton yarn is spun in China and India.

(b) Factory in Kolkata, India, spins yarn from cotton.

Weaving

For thousands of years, fabric has been woven or laced together by hand on a loom, which is a frame on which two sets of threads are placed at right angles to each other. One set of threads, called the warp, is strung lengthwise. A second set of threads, called the weft, is carried in a shuttle that is inserted over and under the warp.

For mechanized weaving, labor constitutes a high percentage of the total production cost. Consequently, weaving is highly clustered in low-wage countries. Despite their remoteness from European and North American markets, China and India have become the dominant fabric producers because their lower labor costs offset the expense of shipping inputs and products long distances. China accounts for nearly 60 percent of the world’s woven cotton fabric production and India 30 percent.

Cotton Weaving

(a) China and India account for 90 percent of world cotton weaving.

(b) Factory in India weaves textiles.

Assembly

Sewing by hand is a very old human activity. Needles made from animal horns or bones date back tens of thousands of years, and iron needles date from the fourteenth century. The first functional sewing machine was invented by French tailor Barthelemy Thimonnier in 1830. Isaac Singer manufactured the first commercially successful sewing machine in the United States during the 1850s.

Textiles are cut and sewn to be assembled into four main types of products: garments, carpets, home products such as bed linens and curtains, and industrial items such as headliners for motor vehicles. Developed countries play a larger role in assembly than in spinning and weaving because most of the consumers of assembled products are located in developed countries. Nonetheless, most clothing is assembled in developing countries.

International Trade in Clothing

The largest flows of clothing are exported from East and Southeast Asia to North America and Europe.

Textile Assembly

Clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, makes clothing for retailers in Europe and the United States.

Pause & Reflect 11.4.2

Check the label on the shirt you are wearing at this moment. Where was it made?

Overall production costs are generally lower in developing countries because substantially lower labor costs than in developed countries offset higher shipping and taxation costs. Most of the cost of clothing sold in developed countries is markup by the retailer. Workers in developing countries earn only around 1 percent of the final cost to the consumer.

Shirt Production Costs

Production costs in Asia account for a small percentage of the final cost to the consumer.