Headmaster, Sadananda Mission High School, Howrah, tushar_das8@yahoo.com
Author is thankful to Prof. Arun Kumar Sengupta, formerly of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata for his valuable comments in an earlier version of the paper and take responsibility for the views expressed and any error remaining in the paper.
This paper attempts to look into the changing trends of wage share in value added, labour productivity and unit labour costs of producing output in industries for West Bengalas well as for all India over the period 2000–01 -2007-08. Using Annual Survey of Industries(ASI) data, the results presented in this study support the idea that given the labour laws and exit policy, labor in practice ceases to be a variable input and increase in labour productivity is associated with a falling share of wages. The labour market stickiness holds good at all India level and it is equally supported by state level data also. Again, at the macro level, though both WB and India emerge as cost competitive in the era of globalisation,significant sectoral variations are also observed.
Wage Share, Labour Productivity, Unit Labour Cost
