More than 20,000 workers in Bangladesh's garment industry lost their jobs in the first six months of 2026, according to data from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association, and the Industrial Police. The figures were reported by the Bangladeshi daily newspaper Prothom Alo, and picked up by Yahoo Finance.
The job losses have been concentrated in the country's ready-made garment sector, known as RMG, which is central to Bangladesh's export economy. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association reported that 80 of its member factories dismissed or retrenched 19,188 workers during the first half of the year. Those factories were spread across Dhaka, Savar-Ashulia, and Gazipur. Of those 80 factories, 27 have since closed permanently.
Industrial Police figures showed a separate count. In the first five months of the year, 79 factories across eight industrial zones laid off 7,784 workers. The highest numbers of layoffs came in March and May, months that coincided with the Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha holidays. In Gazipur alone, 44 factories dismissed 2,155 workers between January and June.
Factory owners and manufacturers offered one explanation. They said a decline in export orders and difficulties securing bank financing forced some factories to close and pushed others to cut staff. Seven factories in Gazipur, including APS Apparels and Evince Textile, said their combined 556 layoffs resulted from reduced orders and financial strain. Owners of 37 other factories listed reasons including labor unrest, production stoppages, alleged misconduct, and suspected document forgery for an additional 1,599 dismissals.
Labor union representatives pushed back on parts of that account. They questioned the scale of any drop in export orders, pointing out that garment exports had only fallen slightly in the outgoing fiscal year. They also suggested that some firings had targeted workers trying to form trade unions inside factories.
The export data adds complexity to the picture. The Export Promotion Bureau reported that garment exports in fiscal year 2024 to 2025 totaled 39.35 billion dollars, an increase of 8.84 percent from the year before. However, during the first 11 months of that same fiscal year, exports came in at 35.31 billion dollars, down 3.41 percent from the same period a year earlier.
Salahuddin Swapan, former secretary general of the Industrial Bangladesh Council, told Prothom Alo that some workers had been dismissed for participating in union activities, noting the legal process for forming unions was recently eased.
The gap between the two sides, factory owners citing economics and labor leaders citing union suppression, remains unresolved. No government agency has released a unified finding on the causes behind the layoffs.
