Research Brief
A COVID-19 retrospective: How is the garment sector in Asia rebuilding?
This Brief provides both an update of the quantitative impact of COVID-19 on Asia’s garment industry, and to bring new qualitative insights into how key industry stakeholders assessed the performance of the national and international pandemic responses in the garment industry.
This Research Brief is organized along four sections. Section 1 describes trends in garment employment during the pandemic overall and for different sub-groups of workers. It also discusses trends in wages and working hours in the sector. Section 2 presents industry reflections on governments’ responses to the pandemic, based on focus group discussions with key stakeholders of the sector. Section 3 summarizes the lessons learned. Section 4 concludes by offering some final reflections and policy recommendations.