Those on the bottom will be squeezed out. The Darwinian principle has been at work for some time. All we can hope for now is to slow it down long enough to point it in another, more positive direction. The women might go into domestic work. Some of the men might become day laborers.
Immigrants are extremely resourceful when it comes to finding jobs.
But still, we're talking about an enormous number of people. The city needs to understand that we're in the middle of a structural crisis, that the labor market that helped the economy grow is going to suffer dramatic change, and we don't have a master plan for how to deal with it. On their own, some garment workers already have made a plan. Aided by the tight labor market, some have moved into construction, food processing or other expanding occupations. Some have gone to new immigrant job centers such as Las Vegas and Atlanta.