What is wage in employment?

Wages are a form of monetary compensation for employees. They are paid according to the amount of time worked by the employee.

The main difference between salary and wages lies in the fact that salary is fixed, i.e. it is predetermined and agreed between the employer and employee, while wages are not fixed, as it varies depending on the performance of the labour. This article presents you the important differences between salary and wages in tabular form.

The term salary is the agreed upon amount of money between the employer and the employee that is extended at regular intervals on the basis of an individual’s performance. Salary is generally a fixed amount of package calculated on an annual basis. When divided by a number of months the amount to be disbursed monthly is ascertained. The same is given to the employee on the basis of his productivity.

An employee is supposed to work for certain fixed hours daily but if Sometimes the work is not finished in time the employee has to devote his extra time without any additional pay. An employee is entitled to leaves, perks, and benefits, i.e. salary will be given if an employee has availed a leave and didn’t turn up for the work.

Salaried persons are generally said to be doing “white collar office jobs” which implies that an individual is well educated, skilled and is employed with some firm and holds a good position in the society.

Wage is termed as a compensation that is given on the basis of the amount of work done and the hours spent in doing that. Wages are variable and do vary with day to day functioning of an individual. Wages are given to labours who are engaged in manufacturing processes and get the compensation on a daily basis.

Labour is paid on the basis of hours and in order to increase the pay, extra hours have to be devoted to fetch more.An individual is paid for his presence, not for his absence i.e. in case a person do not come for the work he will not be paid for that day.

The waged person are said to be doing “blue collar labour job” which implies that an individual is engaged in the unskilled or semi-skilled job and is drawing wages on a daily basis.

It can be easily concluded from the above comparison that salary is a fixed amount of money paid at a regular intervals to an individual for the work done by him in given period of time whereas wage is a variable pay given to an individual for the number of hours spent by him in completing a certain amount of work.