Differential labour costs among countries

A major reason that, say, women workers in the garment and textile plants in some industrialized countries are paid just barely above the minimum award wage is that tens of thousands of Asian young women and children work long hours in such plants at below subsistence wages, producing export goods that flood the market with "cheap" goods in the same industrialized countries.

The differentials between wage and social costs in corporations in industrialized and poorer countries are so large that it is unlikely than many European or American jobs can be saved by cutting wages or social entitlements.