The paper provides the educational composition of the manufacturing workers in the eighteen selected states of India during the last four NSSO rounds on Employment and Unemployment in India covering the period 1983 to 1999-2000. It also presents a labour quality index based on the Jorgenson, Gallop, and Fraumeni methodology for both the rural and urban sectors of the states. It finds that manufacturing workers are more literate today than they were in 1983. The labour quality indices show that the quality changes have been quite slow and there is a lot of variation among the states for both rural and urban sectors of the selected states. The association of the labour quality index with the state’s characteristics is found to be weak but urban labour quality index has stronger links with human development index of the states, the urban poverty ratio of the state, the number of ITI’s in a state, and the intensity of industrialization.