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Industry Opinion
The Bottleneck No One Wants to Admit: Workforce, Academia, and the Policy Contradictions Holding Back Reshoring
By Joe Altieri, FIT Adjunct Professor, Mentor, Educator, and Trainer
We’ve debated tariffs. We’ve scrutinized financing. We’ve dissected supply chains. But the real bottleneck in U.S. apparel reshoring isn’t on Capitol Hill or Wall Street — it’s on the factory floor.
We don’t have enough people who can sew, spread, cut, or finish. And the uncomfortable truth is that our schools, colleges, and trade policies are doing little to close that gap. Reshoring has momentum, but unless we confront this head-on, the entire movement risks stalling.
The Workforce Crisis Nobody Wants to Talk About
In 1980, more than 1,034,000 Americans worked in apparel manufacturing. Today, fewer than 75,000 remain in cut-and-sew (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). That collapse didn’t just erase jobs; it erased skills, pride, and generational know-how.
Now, as companies talk about bringing production back, they face a simple question: who will actually do the work?
Every reshoring announcement looks good in a press release. But the reality on the ground is starker — without trained operators and technicians, those gleaming machines sit idle. Workforce development isn’t a side issue. It is the main issue.
Academia’s Blind Spot
The U.S. education system has been looking the other way while this crisis has built.
High schools gutted vocational programs in textiles and apparel decades ago. In 2022, less than 2% of U.S. career-technical education concentrators were in manufacturing fields (National Center for Education Statistics). Apparel doesn’t even register.
Community colleges and technical schools offer scattered programs, but most are outdated, underfunded, and disconnected from real employers.
Universities lean heavily toward fashion design and merchandising. Production management and supply chain courses are available at institutions like FIT, NC State, and Kent State — but they are niche, under-enrolled, and often treated as second-class tracks compared to design.
Yes, there are bright spots. NC State’s Wilson College of Textiles continues to offer world-class textile engineering programs. Gaston College in North Carolina is training a new generation for regional mills. FIT continues to graduate production managers who understand the nuts and bolts. But these are isolated programs, not a coordinated system.
The bottom line? Academia is not preparing the next generation for the abrupt shift from international dependency to domestic necessity. And without that preparation, reshoring is a slogan, not a strategy.
Policy Contradictions
As if the talent shortage weren’t enough, we’ve layered on a policy framework that makes matters worse.
Reshoring depends on cost competitiveness. Yet, tariffs on raw materials that we no longer produce in the U.S. — such as zippers, certain fabrics, specialty trims, and metals — make it more expensive to manufacture here than to import finished goods.
According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, the U.S. remains heavily import-dependent on most apparel-grade trims and many yarns. Taxing these inputs doesn’t protect the domestic industry; it penalizes it.
The hindsight is obvious: • Exemptions for non-sourceable materials should have been baked into the tariff structure from day one. • Tariff relief should be conditional on proof of domestic production. If you’re making jeans in North Carolina, your imported denim yarn should flow in duty-free. • A dynamic review process should have been established to update the list annually, reflecting what is and isn’t available domestically.
Instead, ideology won. Manufacturers were left to fight uphill against both global competition and their own government’s rules.
The Missing Vision
We cannot rebuild this industry with piecemeal programs and political talking points. What’s required is a coordinated national vision — one that industry, academia, and policymakers all buy into.
Here’s the blueprint:• Workforce Pipelines
o Apprenticeships modeled on Germany and Italy. o Wage subsidies for training years one and two. o Stackable credentials that move an operator from entry-level to technician to supervisor.• Academic Alignment
o Federal and state incentives for schools that add manufacturing pathways. o High school CTE tracks that include textiles and apparel alongside construction and IT. o University programs that elevate production management, not just design.• Policy Realism
o Tariff exemptions for non-sourceable materials. o Conditional relief tied to actual domestic investment. o Annual review boards that adjust tariffs in line with supply chain reality.• Cultural Shift
o Campaigns that reframe factory work as skilled, respected, and essential to national resilience. o Worker voices elevated in media, not erased. o Company structures — from ESOPs like Bollman Hat to profit-sharing models — that give workers a real stake.
Closing PunchReshoring will not fail due to a lack of capital or policy ambition. It will fail due to a lack of people, and for the lack of vision in how we train, respect, and equip them.
We’ve already proven we can design clever financing models, renegotiate trade deals, and spin up new facilities. But unless academia and trade policy catch up with industry’s urgency, “Made in USA” will remain more of a marketing slogan than a working supply chain.
The bottleneck is not in Beijing, or at the Port of Los Angeles, or on the balance sheet. It’s right here at home — in our classrooms, in our policies, and in our willingness to value the workforce that makes it all possible.
If we fail to value and rebuild this workforce, we’re not reshoring — we’re daydreaming.