Wages and employment in the US apparel industry

This article uses individual-level data from the US. Census, Public Use Mic rodata Sample (PUMS), to examine wages and employment in the US. apparel in dustry. Total employment in this sector has been falling since 1970, and it s overall average wage is the lowest of 25 industry aggregates. But disaggr egation by gender, education, and nativity reveals that groups of highly ed ucated male native workers earn higher average wages in apparel than in oth er industries. Moreover, after adjusting for observed individual difference s in human capital (in addition to the three characteristics used to form w orker subsets), high v educated male natives earn positive wage premiums in this sector In contrast, most categories of immigrants and female natives earn relatively low average wages and experience negative wage premiums in apparel. This variation in the adjusted industry wage premiums across worke r groups may be related to apparel's relative exposure to imports and immig rant workers.