To limit labor costs, Hanesbrands is building a largely automated factory in Nanjing. But the company is also building a factory in Vietnam, in addition to a factory it bought here, and two more in Thailand.

Gerald Evans, the president for global supply chain at Hanesbrands, said that compared with China, “we found more ready availability of both land and labor in both Vietnam and Thailand.” Hanesbrands will be shifting some manufacturing from Mexico and Central America to Asia.

In China, where rural villages are running low on able-bodied young workers to send to factories, wages are rising more than 10 percent a year for many assembly-line workers. And pay is rising even faster for skilled workers, like machinery repair technicians.

In coastal provinces with ready access to ports, even unskilled workers now earn $120 a month for a 40-hour workweek, and often considerably more; wages in inland provinces, where transport is costlier, are somewhat lower but also rising fast. While Chinese wages are still less than $1 an hour, factory workers in Vietnam earn as little as $50 a month for a 48-hour workweek, including Saturdays.

Texhong estimates that average labor costs for each textile worker in China will rise 16 percent this year, including increases in benefits costs  on top of a 12 percent increase last year. New regulations are making it harder for companies to avoid paying for benefits, like pensions, further increasing labor costs.

When those increases are combined with a currency rising against the dollar at an annual pace of up to 10 percent, labor costs in China are now climbing at 25 percent a year or more.

Inflation in China  more than 8 percent in February, March and April and 7.7 percent in May  raises the prospect that labor costs will soar even faster soon. That could push up prices for a wide range of goods exported to the United States.