How To Write A Social Analysis Apparel

To: Mr. Cunningham

From: Liam Millen

Business Brief- Social Analysis

September 28, 2016

Social Analysis of the Apparel Industry

In the modern world, the fashion, apparel, accessories, industry has slowly grown into one of the most prominent in the world. This industry encompasses all garments and accessories such as shirts, pants, jewelry, and watches among others. The estimated market value of this industry sits at $352.4 billion dollars, which takes in to account seventeen major players in apparel and accessories (“The World’s Biggest Public Companies”, 2016). The fashion industry is a regarded as a very important one due to its large role in daily life, especially in developed countries, and is one that fluctuates often with new trends

It is mostly women and children who labor in these factories throughout China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, and India. Some of these workers have realized the social injustice they face, and have actually fought back in the form of labor unions. In one company, DK which makes shirts and other garments, a study found that over one third of the workers were children under the age of fourteen, and working up to ten hours a day. This shows the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs is also having a negative on the education of young people, as they are filling these factory jobs instead of going to a school. An estimated 168 million children from ages 5-14 are forced to work in sweatshop environments often producing cotton or other materials for apparel. From 2001-2013 Americans had 203,900 jobs displaced to China and that includes a loss of 56,190 American factories. Also during these years, the United States’ trade deficit increased by $240.1 billion (Kimball, 2014). Various countries in Europe are also outsourcing to underdeveloped countries. This is the most critical trend of the apparel industry because socially, they are destroying sustainable jobs, putting stress on the families of these former workers and replacing them with worse jobs

Its trends and styles are always changing and targeting all members of society. There has been change in recent years in which developed countries are shipping their manufacturing jobs of the industry to underdeveloped countries with lower wages, labor restrictions, and lower quality treatment of workers which include women and children. These trends restrict social mobility and stagnate the ability of its workers to achieve anything greater, which in the long run is detrimental to the country where they live. If change isn’t promoted, whether by social groups, government, or otherwise, this trend will continue on and prove to be detrimental across the