The textile manufacturing industry (NAfICS 313) has played an important role in the history of the United States and continues to be a major industrial employer, not only in the US, but also around the world. Textiles are mainly considered a component part of the supply chain, with end uses ranging from apparel to home textiles to industrial goods to medical textiles. Even though apparel is the largest end use of textiles and has increasingly moved offshore to low-cost labor countries, there remains a growing textile manufacturing industry in the US for capital and technology-intensive products, such as nonwovens and those with military end uses.