Daily wages for farm labourers in Bangladesh fell in June, and the gap between men and women remained. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) quarterly report on crop statistics and agricultural labour wages says a male farm worker earned Tk 648 a day without meals in June, against Tk 478 for a woman: Tk 170, or 26.23 per cent, less.
Men's wages were Tk 720 in May and fell 10 per cent in June. Women's fell 6.27 per cent, from Tk 510 to Tk 478.
Month by month: in March men earned Tk 628 and women Tk 461; in April, Tk 686 and Tk 493; in May, Tk 720 and Tk 510. Women were paid less than men in each of the four months, and both fell in June.
Citing the Labour Force Survey 2024, the report says 44.68 per cent of Bangladesh's employed people work in agriculture. To gather wage data, BBS interviews 10 farm day-labourers in every upazila; where none can be found, it asks the farmers who hire them.
The same report gives crop output for fiscal 2025-26. Aman rice rose 5.11 per cent to 17.4 million tonnes and winter maize 3.60 per cent to 5.048 million tonnes, while wheat fell 1.18 per cent to 1.029 million tonnes. Land under tobacco grew 14.45 per cent and output 12.86 per cent, to 117,000 tonnes.
Wages dipping in the slack months is an old pattern; women being paid about a quarter less every month sits uneasily with their growing share of field work. Agricare24 says the figures come from a report in New Age.
Photo: MOHAMMAD SHAJAHAN Bangladesh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Agricare24
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