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The paper investigates into the impact of international trade on labor market in an emerging market economy. In specific, the paper estimates the impact of manufactured exports on demand for both production and non-production workers and employment elasticity for aggregate as well as disaggregated manufacturing in India during post reforms period. Econometric estimation is carried out for a panel data set comprising of fifteen disaggregated manufacturing industries for the period 1991 to 2010 using dynamic panel data estimation methods. The estimates show that exports have a positive impact on aggregate employment level and on employment elasticity for production as well as non-production workers in India's aggregate manufacturing. However, the effect of trade on employment elasticity varies across industries. Employment elasticity increases in those industries, where the growth rate of real wage declines or labor market is relatively flexible due to high growth of contract labor during post reforms years. JEL Classifications: F16, F14, J23, J21, C23

PurposeThe paper intends to identify the factors that determine the variations in the gender pay gap and female workforce participation at low-skill manufacturing job across Indian states over the time period 2006–2014.Design/methodology/approachGender pay gap is measured in two ways: one is scale insensitive and second one is scale sensitive. To construct scale-sensitive gender pay gap measure wage discrimination index is used. For main analysis, a panel framework is used. Fixed effect model and random effect model are estimated along with all relevant diagnostic tests.FindingsEmpirical analysis elucidates that male literacy rate, female literacy rate and gender parity index are important factors in explaining the variation in gender pay gap and women workforce participation at sub-national level in India. Female literacy rate significantly reduces the crude pay gap; however, it has insignificant effect on scale-sensitive gender pay gap in low-skill manufacturing sector. Educational enrolment widens up the crude wage gap but narrows down the other one. In case of workforce participation educational attainment and school enrolment both reduce women workforce participation in low-skill manufacturing job.Research limitations/implicationsThe present research suffers from two major limitations. Due to lack of information, the paper is unable to study the impacts of female representation in trade unions, availability of supporting infrastructure like day-care facilities for working mothers, etc. in explaining the variation in gender pay gap and women workforce participation. The second limitation is that the research fails to address the issue related to selection into employment. The present paper uses the macro-level state-specific statistics instead of micro-level data; hence the imputed wage for unemployed but potential workers cannot be calculated.Originality/valueThe paper is unique in the sense that it highlights gender pay gap and female workforce participation issue in low-skill manufacturing sector at Indian sub-national level. There are no such papers that highlight these issues in the context of Indian manufacturing sector. Another contribution is that the present paper considers the scale-sensitive gender pay gap, whose determinants are different than crude gender pay gap.