According to the French “Textile News” report, the US WERNER International Consulting Institute recently released statistics on hourly dollar wages in the upstream (spinning and weaving) international textile industry in 2008. The data clearly shows that in most countries around the world in 2008 The wages of textile workers have generally increased, with China leading the way, with a year-on-year surge of 162% (in U.S. dollars) in 2007, and a 121% increase in coastal areas. In addition, the Czech Republic has a faster growth rate of 56%.
According to reports, WERNER’s investigation is limited to the upstream of the textile industry, and it is difficult to determine the scope because the garment industry is too fragmented. Alain Mathieu, deputy director of the institute, believes that the growth rate of labor hours in the garment industry is generally less than 25% to 40% depending on the country. He emphasized that the survey data for most countries were collected until the last quarter of 2008, especially the data released by China. However, in the concession areas of some countries, wage changes were larger, such as Turkey, and Countries also have changes due to different economic policies in various regions, such as India.
Reports say that the textile industry will also be fully affected by exchange rate changes this year. The weakness of the U.S. dollar will intensify high production costs, especially in purchasing areas that pay in U.S. dollars, such as China. Although Chinese companies are increasingly using euros for payments, even using local foreign exchange cannot prevent the country from significantly increasing labor time charges.
The survey report pointed out that in 2008, when labor costs in the textile industry in various countries generally increased, it can be confirmed that the competitiveness of labor costs in the Eurozone has declined. Although Switzerland has not joined the euro zone and has always been the country with the highest labor costs in the world, it has also been obviously severely affected by the euro. Under the influence of the strong euro, there are now 9 of the 12 European countries on the original best list. Due to the depreciation of the US dollar, the United States ranked 13th, behind Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. In 2000, the United States was still ranked before the above-mentioned countries. Within the EU, although Portugal’s labor costs have increased significantly over the past year, it has maintained its competitiveness with the lowest wage levels among Western European countries. Due to the massive shrinkage of the textile industry in Greece, labor costs have become more expensive than in Spain. Alain Mathieu said that there are only five textile mills (filature) left in Greece and the weaving mill (tissage) has almost disappeared. In the UK, the significant shrinkage of the pound has made US dollar wages competitive. The report said that the rate of change in working hours costs in Eastern European countries has now surpassed that of the three countries in the Mediterranean (Turkey, Turkey, and Morocco). Particularly significant is Bulgaria, which has become more competitive than the coastal areas of China. Labor time rates in the Czech Republic are close to those in Portugal.
Mediterranean countries Morocco and Tunisia have basically maintained the stability of labor costs. Turkey’s labor costs have grown rapidly, with a year-on-year increase of 44% in U.S. dollars. The director of the institute believes that Turkey’s production quality is also constantly improving. , and become flexible. He said that wage costs are not the only criterion for determining competition in the textile industry, but it is an important index for explaining global factory relocation activities, which shows the soaring transaction prices and the rapid reorganization of the textile industry supply chain.
