Not all manufacturers have moved production abroad though, as we shall see later, but of the $178 billion spent on apparel in the United States in 1995, $91 billion was spent on imports, a very significant figure. .
Not following this general trend of moving production abroad that is common in the rest of the United States, the home garment industry in Los Angeles has thrived, between 1982 and 1992 the industry increased its labour force by 33%,whilst New York's employment figures decreased in the same period by 35%, Pennsylvania's by 43% and nationally the decline in employment in the apparel industry was 12% . Los Angeles is now the biggest garment manufacturer in the United States and the apparel industry is one of the largest industries in Los Angeles . Surpassing the once mighty aviation industry, which suffered in the aftermath of the cold war because of military cutbacks. What enabled the garment industry in Los Angeles to grow like this when the rest of the country was experiencing cut backs in its home production? Light and Ojeda believe that the near three-fold increase in garment factories and workshops in Los Angeles, from 2,332 in 1970 to 6,364 in 1996, occurred mainly as a result of its superior access to immigrant labour'. Mostly from Mexico and largely, as mentioned above, undocumented . .
Nearly all the Garment workers in Los Angeles are immigrants, in 1990 the figure stood at around 93%, according to Ivan Light . Nearly all of these have arrived in the past fifteen years. The vast majority are Latino, from Mexico and Central America. About ten percent are Asian, mainly from China, Korea and Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. But by far the largest group are Mexican, making up some seventy five percent of the entire apparel industry workforce. A large number of these Mexican garment workers, as mentioned above, are undocumented and therefore working illegally, some 81%, according to a survey carried out by Sheldon Maram in 1979 .