Around the world, these same companies directly or indirectly employ at least another 400,000 people. Among them are many small shops that the big manufacturers subcontract to. They provide a pool of cheap labor. Most are women. Sometimes children work too.
Technology has so advanced that clothing patterns can be simulated via computer modeling.
The rise of sweatshops must be viewed in the context of the profound economic changes that occurred over the last 20 years. Unprecedented corporate restructuring since the 1980s has raised profits by driving down real wages. Union busting paved the way as major industries such as steel and auto shut down scores of factories, displacing formerly highly skilled, high-wage workers. In the U.S. garment industry, employment has declined 30 percent since the mid-1970s. The jobs lost were mostly union jobs.