In many places, child labor could disappear completely in a few decades.
"There are more than 20 million fewer children in child labor today than in 2020...
This reduction is especially welcome news given that so many development trends, including child labor, stalled or reversed during the pandemic. Experts weren’t sure if or how quickly the world would get back on track.
Here is the even better news: since 2000, there are 108 million fewer children in child labor, even as more and more children were born during that same time period.
To be clear, the child labor I am talking about isn’t your teenager pulling some shifts at the local ice cream shop. These are kids as young as five in poor countries who are out breaking rocks or working the fields when they should be in school.
Per a joint report by UNICEF and the International Labour Organization, since 2020, progress has occurred across all global regions and also included a substantial dip in hazardous work, defined as work that is likely to compromise a child’s health, safety, or morals.
The global goal was to end child labor by this year. With 138 million children still engaged in it worldwide, we are clearly far from success. But, the report says, “most regions could see the near or total elimination of child labor in the coming decades,” with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, where birth rates remain high, conflict rife, and economic growth slow...
If the current pace of progress continues, child labor in Asia and the Pacific will be eliminated by 2060 and near zero in Latin America and the Caribbean...
What is behind the downturn in child labor? One big factor is that old, familiar song of economic growth—parents who aren’t cash strapped don’t need an extra pair of hands. A second is better access to schooling, and a third, social protections for children like healthcare and cash transfers."
-via The Progress Network, July 3, 2025
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Note: Something that article, which is pretty short, doesn't get into is that progress WILL increase and speed up significantly in sub-Saharan Africa. A number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are undergoing huge revolutions in access to basic needs, economic development, and quality of life. Child labor rates in sub-Saharan Africa are NOT going to continue declining at the current rate, they are going to increasingly decline at a FASTER rate as access to clean water, plumbing, electricity, and sanitation will all drastically change the labor landscape of Africa and reduce child labor. These trends are already happening in a number of countries, as they have in the other regions of the world.
Every single one of the factors in the reduction in child poverty listed in the final paragraph of the article is improving already in a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, albeit in fits and starts, with uneven progress that will almost certainly even out further as African nations and activists and governments etc. all learn from each other and are able to offer pockets to stability to move forward. (x, x, x, x, x, x)
Reminder to avoid buying anything crochet new from big stores. Crochet (unlike knit) CANNOT be done by a machine and must be done by an actual human being. The person who made it was definitely not paid an appropriate amount for their labour. Most big stores use sweatshops anyway and I know it’s hard to completely avoid buying anything from a major store. But if those specific items don’t sell, we can send a message to companies that we don’t want items made fully by hand using slave labour
This summer, avoid any new crochet items. You don’t need THAT specific top that badly
well you see upon being reminded that acrylic keychains and shitty vinyl figurines do not manifest from air and there’s a whole world of people you’ll never see making them in hell conditions well. The western artist chooses to double down and get really Really mad
That includes the plushies made from a company with zero. ZERO info on where they’re sourcing labor from
Made in the USA: Wage Theft, Fraud and Hidden Sweatshops
Unrolled twitter thread by derek guy (@dieworkwear)
4 Oct 24 • Read on X
ALT enabled on all images. Video has closed captions but is not transcribed.
Not trying to create a pile-on here. But let's talk about why something might still be made in unethical conditions even though it bears a "made in USA" tag. 🧵
The first thing to understand is that not all workers are covered by US labor laws. You might assume that workers get paid a minimum wage (after all, it says "minimum"). In fact, many garment workers in the US toil under what's known as the piecework system.
Piecework means you get paid not by the amount of time you work but the number of operations you complete. This system should be familiar to many of you. As a writer, I get paid per word. The pay is the same whether it takes me 100 or 10 hours to write a 1,000 word article.
My situation is fine bc I get paid enough to eat. But for a garment worker, the pay structure can be peanuts: three cents to sew a zipper or sleeve, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt. These are real numbers for LA-based garment workers.
Piecework is how companies skirt minimum wage laws. Among labor organizers, the term "wage theft" refers to the difference between what a worker should have earned under min wage laws and what they actually earned through the piece rate system.
This system is incredibly common. A 2016 UCLA Labor Center study showed the median piece-rate worker in Los Angeles scrapes together $5.15 per hour—less than half the state’s mandated minimum wage. Labor conditions are also very bad: poor ventilation, dusty air, rats and mice.
A Federal Department of Labor investigation the same year found that 85 percent of Los Angeles garment factories were breaking labor laws. In 2016, these violations amounted to $1.3 million in back wages owed to 865 workers in a sample of 77 factories. This is wage theft.
In 2021, labor organizers won a fight to get piecework banned in California. But two years later, it's still incredibly common. I interviewed an LA-based garment worker who toils 12 hrs a day for $50. She sleeps in the corner of a kitchen. From my article in The Nation:
Currently, there's a new fight get piecework banned nationwide through the FABRC Act. I would link, but Twitter throttles threads that have outbound links, so I would prefer if you Google how you can support this legislation. Or follow @GarmentWorkerLA for more info.
The other reason why a "made in USA" tag may not mean much has to do with how the label is applied.
When you see this label inside your garment, what do you assume? Think about this before moving on to the next tweet.
The Federal Trade Commission has pretty strict rules on who gets to apply that label. For clothes, the item has to be cut and sewn in the US using materials that were made in the US. The FTC tries to match its rules with the common understanding of what "made in US" means.
If you're a giant company like Levi's or LL Bean, you may have lawyers who are advising you on these rules. This is why you see labels like "imported," which means the item was made abroad. Or "made in the US from imported materials" when they can't meet the MiUSA standard.
But it's incredibly common for companies to violate FTC rules. In 2022, the FTC fined the pro-Trump brand Lions Not Sheep $211k for labeling their t-shirts "made in USA" when the shirts were actually imported from China and other countries.
The company was basically importing blanks from China, ripping out the "made in China" label, screen printing the shirt in the US, and then applying a new screen-printed "made in US" label. CEO Sean Whalen claimed he was being persecuted for his pro-Trump views.
But the whole thing started bc Whalen made a video about how his customers are price sensitive, so he imports blanks from China. That's what kicked off the FTC investigation. So while this mislabeling is common, it's hard to get caught unless you make a video about your crimes.
The truth is that making a t-shirt in the USA according to FTC standards will result in a relatively expensive garment. Heddels and Velva Sheen both produce shirts in the US from US grown cotton. The first is $26; second is $90 for a two-pack.
Once you add things such as screenprinting—or if you want a more unique cut and not just basic blanks—the costs go up. This is why Bikers for Trump sourced their merch from Haiti. They knew their customers would not pay an extra $8 for true made-in-USA production.
Today, there are countless companies that make merch for other organizations. They source their t-shirts from a variety of places—some made in the US, most not—and then screenprint a design and fulfill orders. This way, the other org doesn't have to do any work but marketing.
When you see a screenprinted t-shirt for $20, ask yourself: Where was the material grown? Where were the yarns spun? Where was the cutting, sewing, and finishing performed? Where was the screenprinted done? What were the wages and labor conditions along these steps?
I'm not a nationalist, so I don't prioritize American jobs over foreign ones. But I do care about fair wages and labor protections. Just because something was made abroad doesn't mean it was made in a sweatshop. Just because it was made in the US doesn't mean fair wages.
Paying more for a garment is also no guarantee of ethical manufacturing. But when the price of a garment is so low, you leave little on the table for workers. Just because you see a $20 t-shirt that says "made in USA" doesn't mean it was made fairly.
Please don't harass the person who posted that original tweet. My intention is not to cause harm or stress for anyone. Only to help shed light on what goes into garment manufacturing, fair labor, and labeling. Hopefully, you will consider these issues when shopping.
For the inevitable question: "How do I make sure my clothes were made ethically?" This is very difficult to answer in a thread. My simplest answer is that we should elect pro-worker politicians, fight for pro-labor laws, and empower unions so workers can advocate for themselves.
--------------------End----------------------
TL; DR: Doesn't matter if it's the US, if it's not union it's probably a sweatshop. And not all merch is priced high because of fair labour conditions (looking at Taylor Swift and Beyoncé). Look for supply chain transparency.
While tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods grab headlines, extreme heat is the top weather-related killer, says FEMA. FEMA reports do not captu
By Sharon Black
In the U.S., the victims of this crisis are mainly workers toiling in the fields or construction sites or broiling in uncooled warehouses and other sweatshops. The poorest are at risk, including the unhoused, especially those cramped in urban areas. The most impacted are Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor people.
Workers making clothes for the fast fashion giant tell the BBC they labour for up to 75 hours a week.
Those cheap clothes at Shein have a big price tag which few consumers are able to see.
This is the sound of Panyu, the neighbourhood known as the "Shein village", a warren of factories that power the world's largest fast fashion retailer.
"If there are 31 days in a month, I will work 31 days," one worker told the BBC.
Most said they only have one day off a month.
The BBC spent several days here: we visited 10 factories, spoke to four owners and more than 20 workers. We also spent time at labour markets and textile suppliers.
We found that the beating heart of this empire is a workforce sitting behind sewing machines for around 75 hours a week in contravention of Chinese labour laws.
[ ... ]
But even past 22:00, the sewing machines - and the people hunched over them - don't stop as more fabric arrives, in trucks so full that bolts of colour sometimes tumble onto the factory floor.
"We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less."
She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards.
They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it.
[ ... ]
The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option.
"We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents.
"We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour."
Let's do a little math. One Chinese Yuan = 13.81 US cents (or $0.1381) as of Monday. So if the migrant worker from Jiangxi earns CN¥ 2.00 per t-shirt (US$0.2762) and does a dozen in one hour, she is effectively earning US$3.31 per hour. For comparison, the US minimum wage was US$3.35 per hour in between 01 January 1981 and 01 April 1990.
The working hours at Shein factories are as miserable as the pay. A "standard" working day is 14 hours.
Standard working hours appear to be from 08:00 to well past 22:00, the BBC found.
This is consistent with a report from the Swiss advocacy group Public Eye, which was based on interviews with 13 textile workers at factories producing clothes for Shein.
They found that a number of staff were working excessive overtime. It noted the basic wage without overtime was 2,400 yuan (£265; $327) - below the 6,512 yuan the Asia Floor Wage Alliance says is needed for a "living wage". But the workers we spoke to managed to earn anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 yuan a month.
"These hours are not unusual, but it's clear that it's illegal and it violates basic human rights," said David Hachfield from the group. "It's an extreme form of exploitation and this needs to be visible."
The average working week should not exceed 44 hours, according to Chinese labour laws, which also state that employers should ensure workers have at least one rest day a week.
There are other issues mentioned in the article such as the sourcing of cotton from Xinjiang where the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide against the Uighur people.
Don't buy clothing made in sweatshops from ANY country. In the US it was sweatshop conditions at clothing manufacturers which were one of the spurs for the growth of labor unions in the early 20th century.
I would add that "fast fashion" is generally wasteful and bad for the environment. Buy clothes which are not likely to quickly become unfashionable and those which are sturdy enough to last for a while.
i will not shut up about how harmful it is to use these tiny "handmade" tags when youre a hobby tailor or a small buisness. advertising with how an item is handmade (but also just gifting people something and it has a handmade tag or button or whatever) is incredibly harmful. every piece of clothing is handmade. there might be a few exceptions but the absolute vast majority was made by hand. your primark, shein, temu and h&m clothes are handmade. these buisinesses dont want you to know that, they dont want you to see that a person made your t shirt. to think about the horrible conditions they made it in and how they are paid wages that dont allow them to live.
by putting a handmade tag on your handmade dress you are widening that gap between you, and the factory workers. you are dehumanising and devalueing them and their work.
we need everyone to understand how exactly clothing is made and who makes it. we need to understand that we are profiting off of someone elses unpaid labor. if everyone were to understand how every piece of clothing is handmade, you wouldnt need your shitty tags.
making your own clothes should teach you how much labor needs to be put into a simple pair of underwear. use that knowledge to advocate for your fellow sewists.
you can make a small lino or screen print to tag your clothes or order custom tags online! you can do that.
sewing and selling your work is great. and not underpricing it is important. so if you want to put a cute little tag on there, here are some ideas:
- made by y/n
- logo
- handmade like every piece of clothing
and for everyone who isnt a sewist/knitter/crocheter or whatever. look at each and every clothing/textile item you own or are about to buy and see how someone made it.
