An attempt has been made in this paper to examine the wage structure in consumer goods industries in relation to that in capital goods industries in the light of the two major hypotheses, viz., 'the expected ability to pay hypothesis' and 'the technology hypothesis' which constitute the basic theoretical framework for explaining the inter-industry wage differentials in the manufacturing sector. The analysis is based on the cross-section data relating to the industries classified at the three-digit level of aggregation available from ASI 1975-76.