A structural model and a statistical model have been developed to estimate the amount of cotton used for apparent apparel consumption by employing two independent approaches. Three government and private databases were employed for the modeling and analysis work; U.S. Census Bureau data, NPD consumer panel data, and NCC fiber shipment data. Analyses were made to investigate the impact of foreign exchange rate and the hourly wage on cotton demand in apparel using a multi-variate regression model. The cotton consumption for year 2000 and 2001 was forecasted by using a time series model. The results show that both the foreign exchange rate and the hourly wage have significant impacts on cotton demand in domestic apparel market. The overall cotton demand in apparel market is likely to decrease steadily whereas the import/export will increase rapidly. The results from two different data sources were quite comparable and have shown little difference in the forecasted demands. This study has demonstrated a possibility of estimating the mill consumption of cotton for
U.S. apparel by segmenting it into mill level and consumer level.