Approximately how many people are employed in the United States textile industry?

• A. 100,000
• B. 233,300
• C. 500,000
• D. 1,000,000

Answer: (B)

Understanding the size of a specific industry’s workforce helps you gauge its economic footprint. The United States textile industry covers fiber processing, yarn and fabric production, and finishing—activities that are crucial but fewer in number than many other manufacturing sectors today. Over the decades, employment in this field has declined due to automation and offshoring, so the current workforce sits in the low-to-mid hundreds of thousands rather than in the millions.

Among the given options, roughly 233,000 workers best matches the typical current scale of employment in the U.S. textile industry. A figure around 100,000 would undervalue the sector’s size, while 500,000 or 1,000,000 would overstate it for today’s landscape.