Posted on 04/16/2016 2:55:11 AM PDT by lowbridge
Los Angeles was once the epicenter of apparel manufacturing, attracting buyers from across the world to its clothing factories, sample rooms and design studios.
But over the years, cheap overseas labor lured many apparel makers to outsource to foreign competitors in far-flung places such as China and Vietnam.
Now, Los Angeles firms are facing another big hurdle — California's minimum wage hitting $15 an hour by 2022 — which could spur more garment makers to exit the state.
Last week American Apparel, the biggest clothing maker in Los Angeles, said it might outsource the making of some garments to another manufacturer in the U.S., and wiped out about 500 local jobs. The company still employs about 4,000 workers in Southern California.
"The exodus has begun," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Cal State Channel Islands and a former director at Forever 21. "The garment industry is gradually shrinking and that trend will likely continue."
In the last decade, local apparel manufacturing has already thinned significantly. Last year, Los Angeles County was home to 2,128 garment makers, down 33% from 2005, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. During that period, employment also plunged by a third, to 40,500 workers. Wages, meanwhile, jumped 17% adjusting for inflation, to $698 per week — although that can include pay for top executives, as well as bonuses, tips and paid vacation time.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
How’s it feel to shoot your self in the foot economically?
I read the entire article at the link.
My teenage granddaughters buy from American Apparel. I’ve been shopping with them and the quality is all right. Nothing I would want, but fashionable for their age.
American Apparel can easily relocate to Texas. CA is NOT business friendly. Democrats run the show.
I simply can’t relate to the mentality of demanding more instead of improving myself.
They will never accept responsibility. It will always be the fault of the greedy profit seekers.
It is those rich factory owners wanting their third Rolls or second summer home in the Hamptons.
The fact that no one wants to pay an extra $10 for a tee-shirt so that someone that they have never met can afford a 70 inch TV
Sorry folks the simple fact is that even in a communist country the realities of capitalism apply. The price of everything is defendant on the rules of supply and demand AND on what the market will bear.
If a tee-shirt will not sell at $50 then the price must fall to that at which it will sell. If the price of labor precludes selling at that price then the cost of labor must fall or the tee-shirt will not be manufactured and the labor will be unemployed.
As with most things when it comes to Democrats, it is not about minimum wage. It is about votes.
If they can convince more people to vote Democrat even as it destroys the economy, they will do so.
We now know the Republican party is the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters.
Wages are, and always have been, a measure of the productivity that the employee can bring to his employer.
If the employee cannot provide enough additional value to the product to pay for the cost of the maintenance of his position in the work force, and allow the owner or proprietor to earn a positive cash flow, then the position disappears.
If there is no growth, then contraction sets in. There is no “neutral point”.
any chance this minimum wage nonsense is why my wife is getting paid 10 bucks an hour more than she used to for her advertising work.
making double what a McDonalds workers will make in Manhattan is an insult now, I guess, so maybe they’re throwing more at the workers?
. Now, Los Angeles firms are facing another big hurdle — California’s minimum wage hitting $15 an hour by 2022 —
It will all get worse if D-bags keep voting for D-bags.
The lawmakers knew this would happen, so it was foreseen and therefore intended.
The catch is that you have to keep your pony with you at all times.
(Old joke)
“How many humans do your horses own?”
Democrats RUIN the show.
Fixed it for you!
Leftism is an anti-intellectual movement by its nature - it demands that you ignore what is right in front of your eyes and instead believe what should be. “Men and Women are equal”, “Islam is a religion of peace”, “Diversity is our strength”, etc etc. Any candidate who can be elected by leftists has to submit to the feel-good lies. The farther leftward the country goes, the more they have to submit, until they don’t even know what reality is anymore.
Well put
A wage that folks could survive on would be a good thing. It would curtail a lot of federal handouts. What's going on now isn't that. No one is asking the protestors if they buy made in the USA goods whenever possible.
A combination of keeping invaders (legal and illegal) out of the US, protection from unfair practices for imports, US jobs for US citizens, and curtailing regulations of startups, and wages would take care of themselves. Supply and demand could function.
The Democrat Party in a nutshell: Slogans, aphorisms and nonsequiturs.
Each state is a small independent country. That is the original intent of the republic.
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