In a textile, apparel, or upholstery operation, you track and control fabric yardage — recording incoming fabric, monitoring use against jobs, reconciling inventory, and maintaining the records that production and finance both depend on.
A typical day often involves yardage receiving, inventory tracking, cut-room coordination, and the steady cadence of small paperwork — checking incoming fabric rolls for quantity, recording yardage in inventory systems, pulling materials for upcoming cuts, reconciling cut tickets against piece-goods records. You're often the keeper of how much yardage actually exists versus what the system says. Inventory accuracy and cut-room readiness are the operating measures.
The harder part is often the discrepancies between vendor counts and actual yardage — fabric mills don't always ship exactly what's on the invoice, and shrinkage from inspection compounds with cut allowance. Industry variance shapes the role: apparel, upholstery, and home-textile operations each have different fabric-handling and traceability standards.
The role tends to suit people who are detail-oriented, comfortable with fabric handling, and patient with inventory reconciliation. On-the-job training and textile-industry experience anchor advancement. The trade-off is the modest pay balanced against steady hours and the satisfaction of being the person who knows where every roll is.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
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View all Admin & Office roles →In a textile, apparel, or upholstery operation, you track and control fabric yardage — recording incoming fabric, monitoring use against jobs, reconciling inventory, and maintaining the records that production and finance both depend on.
Median pay for a Yardage Control Clerk is about $58K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $39K to $85K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Speaking, Reading Comprehension, Active Listening, Time Management, and Critical Thinking.
Most people in this role hold a high school diploma.
Employment in this field is projected to decline about 1.8% through 2034, with roughly 385,000 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Project Manager, Implementation Project Manager, and Technical Project Manager (Technical PM).
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