American-Made Socks and the U.S. Textile Industry: What's Left, and Who Still Knits Here

Socks are one of the few pieces of clothing you can still find made in the U.S. without much effort. That's notable, because the American textile and apparel industry around them has shrunk dramatically. Here's what the federal jobs data shows, what happened to America's sock towns, and which mills are still knitting.

How much has the U.S. textile and apparel industry shrunk?

Sept. 1990Sept. 2026

September 2026 figures are preliminary. Sock and hosiery mills are counted within apparel manufacturing.

Source: BLS CES3231300001, CES3231400001, CES3231500001

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Industry	Sept. 1990 (thousands)	Sept. 2026 (thousands)
Textile mills	488.3	78.1
Textile product mills	232.9	93.7
Apparel manufacturing	891.5	71.4

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks three related industries:

• Textile mills spin yarn and make fabric. Employment fell from 488,300 in September 1990 to 78,100 in September 2026, down about 84%.
• Textile product mills turn fabric into goods like carpets, curtains and bags. Jobs fell from 232,900 to 93,700, down about 60%.
• Apparel manufacturing, which includes knitting mills that make socks and hosiery, fell from 891,500 to 71,400, down about 92%.

Combined, the three went from about 1.6 million jobs to about 243,000. Over the same period, total U.S. manufacturing employment fell about 28%, from 17.6 million to 12.65 million, so textiles and apparel shrank far faster than factories overall.

When did American clothing manufacturing decline?

Source: BLS CES3231500001

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Year	Jobs (thousands)
1990	892
1991	876
1992	870
1993	849
1994	833
1995	779
1996	712
1997	670
1998	610
1999	523
2000	472
2001	392
2002	346
2003	291
2004	275
2005	244
2006	228
2007	211
2008	199
2009	164
2010	154
2011	152
2012	147
2013	144
2014	139
2015	136
2016	130
2017	115
2018	112
2019	109
2020	89.3
2021	91.7
2022	91.4
2023	89.1
2024	82.6
2025	78.7
2026	71.4

The apparel decline started earlier than the broader factory collapse of the 2000s. Apparel jobs fell from 891,500 in 1990 to 472,400 in 2000, nearly halving in a decade, then to 153,500 in 2010. Since then the losses have been slower but steady: 89,300 in 2020 and 71,400 in 2026.

Textile mills followed a similar path, with a steep drop between 2000 (376,200) and 2010 (118,300). The 1990s and 2000s brought major changes to global trade in clothing and textiles, and much of the production moved to countries with lower labor costs.

What happened to America's sock capital?

Fort Payne, Alabama, is the clearest example. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, the town's hosiery industry began with the Florence Knitting Company in October 1907. By the 1990s, Fort Payne's mills produced more than 3 million pairs of socks a week and employed about 5,000 people.

Then, in the 2000s, most of that production moved overseas. The town now has a hosiery museum telling the story. Fort Payne's arc mirrors the national chart above: a long-established American industry that shrank in a little over a decade.

Who still makes socks in the USA?

Some of the best-known survivors are family businesses that kept knitting at home.

Wigwam: Sheboygan, Wisconsin, since 1905

According to Wigwam's company history, the business began as the Hand Knit Hosiery Company in 1905, formed after a 1904 fire destroyed the Sheboygan Knitting Company. Its founders included Herbert Chesebro, Lawrence A. Bentz and Robert H. Ehaney. The company took the Wigwam name in 1957 and began building a 200,000-square-foot plant in the Sheboygan Industrial Park in 1970. It added a merino wool line in 1996 and still runs an outlet in its factory building. See more products made in Wisconsin or the Wigwam brand page.

Darn Tough: Northfield, Vermont

Darn Tough socks are made by Cabot Hosiery Mills in Northfield, Vermont. According to the company, Ric Cabot joined his father Marc in the business in 1989. The first Darn Tough sock came in 2004, debuting with 3,500 pairs at the Vermont City Marathon, backed by what the company calls the industry's first lifetime guarantee. Darn Tough has since added a mill in Waterbury, reviving the historic Nantanna Mill. See made in Vermont and the Darn Tough brand page.

How can you tell if socks are made in the USA?

Socks have a labeling rule that makes this easier than most clothing. Under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act, as explained by the Federal Trade Commission, socks sold in packages must show the country of origin on the front of the package, next to the size. Look for:

• "Made in USA" with no qualifier. This means the socks were made in the U.S. of U.S.-made materials, under the FTC's textile rules.
• "Made in USA of imported yarn" or similar. The knitting happened here, but the yarn didn't.
• "Imported" or a foreign country name. Made abroad, even if the brand is American.

For online listings, the FTC requires sellers of textile products to say whether a product is made in the USA, imported, or both. Our step-by-step guide to reading clothing labels covers fiber content and RN numbers, and what "Made in USA" legally means covers the broader FTC standard.

Are American-made socks worth it?

That depends on what you value, and we don't track prices. A few points to weigh:

• Durability guarantees. Some U.S. makers back their socks with long-term guarantees. Darn Tough's lifetime guarantee is the best-known example.
• Jobs. With only about 71,000 apparel manufacturing jobs left nationally, each surviving mill is a meaningful local employer.
• Transparency. Domestic mills that tell you where they knit, like Sheboygan or Northfield, make it easier to know what you're buying.

Browse all American-made apparel in our directory, or explore products by state.

About this data

Employment figures are from the BLS Current Employment Statistics survey (series CES3231300001, CES3231400001, CES3231500001 and CES3000000001), all employees, seasonally adjusted, September values, downloaded from the BLS public data API. Percentage changes are our calculations. September 2026 figures are preliminary. Company histories come from Wigwam's and Darn Tough's own websites; Fort Payne figures come from the Encyclopedia of Alabama.