Abstract

Historically The Philippine Garment Industry Was At Its Advantage In Times Of The Multi fibre Arrangement Mfa A Period When There Was An Imposed Quota Of Imports From The Developing Countries The Mfa Quota Regime Has Resulted To World s Redistribution Of Garment Production Shifting Some Production From Strongest Producers Like China And Bangladesh To The Other Developing Countries Like The Philippines As The Mfa Ended In 2005 The Philippines Has Consequently Taken On Initiatives Toward Preferential Tariffs To Remain Competitive And Gain Market Access To Its Biggest Markets Such As Us And Eu However The Country Is Facing Challenges In The Pursuance Of These Initiatives which seems To Have A Sluggish Progress and That Threatens The Philippine Garment Firm Owners To Move Out of the Country in this Paper an Empirical Analysis Was Done To Show The Relationship of Trading Activities And Employment Creation In The Garment Industry In Support to The Revival Of The Industry Using Firm-Level Pooled Data of 231 Garment Firms from the Enterprise Survey Datasets of 2009 And 2015 The Regression Results Suggest That the Garment Exporter Firms Significantly Contributes to Job Creation for all Types of Workers in The Industry The Empirical Analysis Builds On The Models That show the Relationship Of Export Share Labor Intensity Firm Size Imports and Foreign Ownership to Employment The Regression Provides Robust And Significant Result To The Key Variables Contributing to The Literature On Export-Orientation And Employment This paper Concludes That The Industry s Revival Is Essential And Should Be Supported By the Government Because of Its Potential Contribution To Job Creation Moreover The Philippines May Not Be Competitive on Labor Cost at Par With China And Bangladesh The Country May Compete on Product Design Hence Moving Up The Value Chain And Attract Investors Addressing The Root Cause Of Garment Industry s Competitive Disadvantage Such As Reducing Cost of