Trends in wages of regular wage employees and casual workers in Indian states

Using the unit record data from the Employment-Unemployment Surveys and the Periodic Labour Force Survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation, the focus of this paper is to present a comprehensive picture of the trends of average real daily wages by type of work status and location, across different states over five time points, namely 1983, 1993–1994, 2004–2005, 2011–2012 and 2017–2018. One of the forms of dualism in the wage labour market is manifested in terms of regular work and casual work. There was a deceleration in the growth rates of wages for both categories of workers in recent years. However, wages of casual workers experienced relatively higher long-term growth rates, and as a result, there is a convergence of regular and casual wages. The inter-state variation of wages is not only large, but the wage levels and the growth rates during the period under consideration do not always reflect the economic condition and level of development. A positive development is that the rural–urban wage gap has narrowed down over the years. Overall, the number of casual workers has been greater than regular salaried/wage employees, but the difference has been greatly reduced over the years. This is another positive development except that the wages of regular workers has been declining in recent years. That the decline takes place in a period of high GDP growth is a matter of serious concern.