The American textile and apparel industries, like manufacturing as a whole, are experiencing a nascent turnaround as apparel and textile companies demand higher quality, more reliable scheduling and fewer safety problems than they encounter overseas. But because the industries were decimated over the last two decades -- 77 percent of the American work force has been lost since 1990 as companies moved jobs abroad -- manufacturers are now scrambling to find workers to fill the specialized jobs that have not been taken over by machines. "It withered away and nobody noticed," Jen Guarino, a former chief executive of the leather-goods maker J. W. Hulme, said of the skilled sewing work force. "Businesses stopped investing in training; they stopped investing in equipment."
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