The paper measures the growth and determinants of wage rate for industrial labour in India, both in money as well as in real terms, and analyses the factors responsible for variation across major states covering the period from 1970-71 to 2001-02. The variation of money wage rate is explained by the factors like consumer price index of industrial worker, productivity of labour of the current period as well as of the previous period, per capita state domestic product, degree of urbanisation, wage rate for the previous period and the time trend. The function specifying real wage rate is explained in terms of all the factors except consumer price index for industrial labour. The analysis reveals that there exists large-scale inter-state variation in the growth rate of wage for industrial labour and the determinants of its movement. Our analysis can be contrasted with the existing studies on the determinants of wage rate movements, which suggested a common explanation for wage rate movements for all the states based on aggregate data at all-India level. The finding of this study can be a guideline for framing appropriate policies, to improve the situation of wage rate for industrial labour.