I’ve put a lot of miles on American highways. Driving through the Carolinas and here in Georgia, you pass towns built around a mill. Some still have the brick buildings, with tall windows and a water tower that has the company name painted on it. A lot of those buildings are empty now. Each one used to be somebody’s paycheck.
I started neat&bare because I wanted to understand what happened to those towns and to do my small part to turn it around.
What happened
The numbers are hard to look at. In January 1990, about 938,600 Americans worked in apparel manufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. By September 2026 the number was about 71,400. That’s more than nine out of ten jobs gone in one working lifetime.
Textile mills, where cotton gets spun into yarn and woven or knit into fabric, took a hit too. BLS found that textile mill employment fell 76 percent from 1991 to 2016, while apparel fell 85 percent. Apparel had the largest drop of any manufacturing industry in the country. Add apparel and textiles together and BLS counts about 1.35 million jobs lost between 1990 and 2019.
You can see the results in your own closet. The American Apparel & Footwear Association reports that 96.9 percent of the apparel and footwear sold in the U.S. in 2025 was imported. Turn over the tag on nearly any shirt you own and it probably wasn’t sewn here.
There wasn’t one single cause. Trade deals in the 1990s and 2000s opened the door to cheaper overseas labor, and quota limits on clothing imports were phased out. Companies chased the lowest price per unit. Mill towns that had run for generations couldn’t compete on price alone, and one by one the looms went quiet.
The part that gets me as a farm owner
Here’s what bothers me most. America still grows some of the best cotton in the world. We just don’t use much of it ourselves anymore.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says American mills used about 10.3 million bales of cotton a year in the early 1990s. By 2023/24 that had dropped to about 1.9 million bales, and the share of our crop shipped overseas rose from about 30 percent to about 80 percent. For three decades the United States was the world’s largest cotton exporter, and only recently did Brazil pass us. The U.S. is still forecast to supply about 28.5 percent of the world’s cotton exports in 2026/27.
So we grow the cotton, ship it across an ocean, have it spun and sewn somewhere else, then ship it back and buy it at the mall. As a man who drives freight for a living, I can tell you that’s a long way to haul a T-shirt.
How we change it
I’m not going to pretend one small shop fixes all that. But I believe in the old saying that every dollar you spend is a vote, and there are real things all of us can do.
Read the label. “Made in USA” means something. When you buy it, you’re keeping a sewing room, a mill, or a print shop open somewhere in this country.
Buy fewer, better things. A cheap shirt that falls apart after five washes isn’t a deal. A well-made 100% cotton tee that lasts for years is. Quality is how American makers compete.
Support small makers. Small shops and family businesses are often the first to take a chance on a domestic supplier. Every order helps them keep doing it.
Ask for American cotton. Ask the brands you like where their fabric comes from. When enough customers ask, companies listen.
Tell the story. Share it with your kids, your coworkers, and the folks at church. A lot of people simply don’t know how much we’ve lost or how close the answer is.
What neat&bare is doing
At neat&bare, we keep it simple. We sell natural, everyday essentials like 100% cotton tees, mugs, and canvas lunch bags, and we look for made-in-USA options wherever we can. We’re working on bringing made-in-USA cast iron to the shop soon, because a good skillet is something you hand down, not throw out.
We’re small and still growing. I’m honest about where things are made, and I’m always looking for more American partners. Every order helps me buy more from American makers and suppliers.
Those brick mills don’t have to stay empty. If enough of us choose well-made goods from home, a few of those windows might light up again.
Take a look at what we’re building at neatandbare.com. Simple, natural, made with care. Thanks for riding along.
— Dax James, neat&bare
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED, “All Employees, Apparel Manufacturing” (CES3231500001): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3231500001 and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/CES3231500001
- BLS, The Economics Daily, “Employment in apparel manufacturing decreased 85 percent over last 25 years” (2017): https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/employment-in-apparel-manufacturing-decreased-85-percent-over-last-25-years.htm
- BLS, Beyond the Numbers, “Forty years of falling manufacturing employment”: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/pdf/forty-years-of-falling-manufacturing-employment.pdf
- American Apparel & Footwear Association, ApparelStats & ShoeStats 2026: https://www.aafaglobal.org/SFTP/OI_Reports/AAFA_Industry_Stats_2026.pdf
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Cotton: World Markets and Trade: https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/kp78gg36g/j9603s109/3n205r20h/cotton.pdf
- USDA Economic Research Service, Cotton and Wool Outlook, June 2026: https://ers.usda.gov/media/29226/cws-26f.pdf