Sarah Gonzalez

That's worth money.

Absolutely.

Do you think that your average consumer of this product thinks, oh, wait, that's what American labor is?

It's like someone getting paid 18 cents to 30 cents to work on this?

Most of the garment factories left in the U.S., over 76% of them, are small operations with fewer than 10 workers.

You'd walk by some of these and never even know there was a garment factory there.

In New York City, a factory could be on top of a restaurant in Little Italy.

In Los Angeles, it could be on a residential street, looking like any other single-story house on the block.

There aren't that many factories or that many domestic garment workers.

In 1990 there were like 900,000 apparel manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Today there are 82,000.

The U.S.

lost most of its garment industry in the 90s when brands and retailers started sourcing more and more products overseas and paying other countries to make more and more clothes.

And when that happened, the U.S.

kind of stopped investing in the factories that were left, stopped innovating.

So walking into some of these factories today can feel like going back in time.

This is Aisha Barenblatt.

Her work running a nonprofit called Remake has taken her inside garment factories all over the U.S.

and abroad.

We have some.