The point when the supply of surplus labour from rural areas, for employment in cities, is exhausted. It is named after Caribbean economist William Arthur Lewis, who proposed the idea in 1954. Consequently, Lewis also won the Nobel Prize in 1979. All countries witness the Lewis turning point in the course of their transition from agrarian to industrial economies. The movement of labour towards cities comes to a halt when, as a result of the continued drainage of labour from rural areas, wages in rural areas rise above those in the cities.
