ABSTRACT
In January 1997, Guess? Inc., the largest apparel manufacturer in Los Angeles, announced that it was moving 40 percent of its production to Mexico. 2 That same month, the California State Employment Development Department reported that apparel employment had grown in Los Angeles County by more than 6 percent over the past year, continuing a pattern of growth over the past few decades. How are we to understand these contradictory facts? Is Los Angeles an exception to the general pattern throughout the United States of erosion of employment in the apparel industry? Or is it, too, succumbing to the lure of lower wages offshore, especially in nearby Mexico, now that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has eased restrictions on imports from that country and will entirely eliminate them by 2004?
