Rung 04 — Higher secondary (12th)
47.85 million people aged 21–34. 17.06% hold a regular salaried job, of which 7.38% of the rung is formal work. 14.97% are still studying.
Self-contained: everything below is derived from PLFS CY2025 for this rung alone. The ladder-wide
comparison is in ../README.md.
Who is counted
Section titled “Who is counted”| Filter | Value |
|---|---|
release_id |
calendar_2025 |
visit |
V1 |
gedu_lvl |
10 — “Literate: higher secondary” |
age |
21–34 |
Sample: 56,073 people across 19,398 first-stage units, representing 47.85 million.
Passed class 12 and holds no higher qualification yet. No one here holds a technical
qualification — tedu_lvl is 01 for all 56,073.
This rung is not a destination, and that changes how every number on it must be read.
gedu_lvl records the highest qualification completed, so an undergraduate in their second year
sits here until they graduate. 14.97% of this rung is currently studying, and at ages 21–23 that
figure is 39.09%. Nobody else below a degree has this problem: the studying share is 0.01% at
below-middle-school, 0.07% at middle, 0.78% at secondary, and then jumps to 15% here.
The consequence is that the rung’s employment rate is diluted by people who have not entered the labour market and mostly will not enter it from this rung — they will leave for rung 10 or 07 when they graduate. The 7.38% is a floor, not an estimate of what a 12th-pass faces.
What they are doing
Section titled “What they are doing”| Share | People | |
|---|---|---|
| Formal work | 7.38% | 3.53m |
| Informal wage work | 16.23% | 7.77m |
| Self-employed, earning | 13.70% | 6.55m |
| Studying | 14.97% | 7.16m |
| Unemployed, seeking | 3.59% | 1.72m |
| Domestic duties | 28.36% | 13.57m |
Informal wage work falls sharply here — 24.96% at secondary to 16.23% — but a third of that fall is people moving into study rather than into better work. Unemployment reaches 3.59%, the highest of any school rung: a 12th-pass can afford to search.
Gender
Section titled “Gender”| Share of rung | Formal work | Domestic duties | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | 52.1% | 11.84% | 0.18% | ₹16,000 | 24.94m |
| Female | 47.9% | 2.52% | 59.06% | ₹11,000 | 22.90m |
A man is 4.7 times more likely to hold a formal job. The gap has begun to narrow from its peak at secondary (5.8×) but the female rate is still 2.52%, and 59% of women on this rung are in domestic duties.
Urban and rural
Section titled “Urban and rural”| Share | Formal work | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rural | 66.3% | 5.46% | ₹15,000 | 31.72m |
| Urban | 33.7% | 11.14% | ₹17,000 | 16.13m |
What formal work pays, and whether it grows
Section titled “What formal work pays, and whether it grows”Monthly wage among the 7.38% in formal work, measured on tenure.
| Tenure | n | p25 | Median | p75 | p90 | ≥₹20k | ≥₹30k | ≥₹50k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 278 | ₹10,200 | ₹14,500 | ₹18,000 | ₹23,000 | 19.0% | 3.3% | 0.0% |
| 1 to 3 years | 1,288 | ₹12,000 | ₹15,000 | ₹19,500 | ₹25,000 | 31.4% | 9.8% | 0.9% |
| Over 3 years | 2,431 | ₹12,000 | ₹16,500 | ₹25,000 | ₹35,000 | 40.7% | 17.3% | 2.0% |
The median rises 1.14× over three-plus years, but the top of the distribution moves far more: p75 goes ₹18,000 to ₹25,000 and p90 goes ₹23,000 to ₹35,000. The share above ₹30,000 goes from 3.3% to 17.3%. This is the first rung with a visible upper tail — a minority of 12th-passes reach wages that do not exist at all below this level.
₹50,000 a month is cleared by 62 people out of 56,073 — 2.0% of those with 3+ years of tenure. Thin, but it is the first rung where the ₹6 lakh threshold produces a number worth printing rather than a curiosity.
Where the formal jobs are
Section titled “Where the formal jobs are”| Occupation | n | Share | Median wage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing labourers | 355 | 8.1% | ₹15,000 |
| Protective service workers | 361 | 8.1% | ₹20,000 |
| General office clerks | 198 | 4.8% | ₹18,000 |
| Shop salespersons | 169 | 4.3% | ₹15,000 |
| Other clerical support workers | 155 | 3.5% | ₹15,200 |
| Other sales workers | 132 | 3.3% | ₹15,712 |
Shares are of all formally employed on the rung. Occupations with fewer than 15 people are suppressed and further rows below the top six are not listed, so this table sums to less than the rung’s total.
Clerical work appears for the first time. Below this rung, formal work is labour, cleaning, driving and security; here office clerks are the third-largest category. Class 12 is the qualification that buys a desk. The occupation mix is also far flatter than the rungs below — the top six account for 35% of formal work against 65% at below-middle-school.
Across a working life
Section titled “Across a working life”Synthetic cohort, not a projection. The age-40 column describes people who are 40 today.
| At entry (21–23) | Age 30 | Age 40 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample n | 18,863 | 8,808 | 5,177 |
| Population | 16.01m | 7.47m | 4.20m |
| — of whom in formal work | 650 | 930 | 777 |
| In formal work | 3.48% | 10.86% | 15.58% |
| Still studying | 39.09% | 0.41% | 0.03% |
| Mean wage | ₹15,648 | ₹19,581 | ₹27,138 |
| Median wage | ₹15,000 | ₹16,500 | ₹22,000 |
Read the entry column with the studying column beside it. At 21–23, 39% of this rung is in education and 3.48% is in formal work — a lower rate than the secondary rung’s 5.33%, purely because so many are still students. By 30 the studying share is 0.41% and formal work has tripled to 10.86%.
Twenty years add 73% to the mean wage, the largest lifetime growth of any school rung and more than double the secondary rung’s 29%.
A caveat specific to this rung’s age-40 column. Those who went on to a degree have left for another rung, so the 40-year-olds still here are the ones who never continued. That is a differently-selected group from the 21–23 year-olds, 39% of whom are mid-degree. The lifecycle columns are less comparable here than on any other rung.
The same rung at three points in a working life
Section titled “The same rung at three points in a working life”| Life stage | Regular salaried | Of which formal | People |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | 10.7% | 3.5% | 16.01m |
| Age 30 | 22.2% | 10.9% | 7.47m |
| Age 40 | 26.0% | 15.6% | 4.20m |
Regular salaried is a salaried job of any kind (pas='31'). Formal is the subset that is actually paid and carries a written contract or social security. The difference between the two columns is the informal salaried workforce.
These are three different cohorts, not one cohort ageing. Today’s 40-year-olds finished a different school system in a different labour market from this year’s entrants, so this table shows where each age group stands now. It does not say what today’s entrant will earn at 40.
Entry uses each rung’s own window — three years from that course’s normal completion age; age 30 is ages 29–31 and age 40 is ages 39–41, three-year bands for sample.
What they actually do
Section titled “What they actually do”Job function among those in formal work, rolled up from NCO 2015 three-digit occupation groups by build_job_function.py. NCO orders by skill level before function, so a raw occupation table splits one function across three divisions — software work sits in 251/252, 351/352 and 133. Shares sum to 100; nothing is suppressed.
| Function | Share | People | Public sector | Median wage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skilled trades & production | 27.45% | 969k | 8.4% | ₹15,000 |
| Clerical & office support | 14.38% | 507k | 42.5% | ₹16,000 |
| Sales & marketing | 13.89% | 490k | 4.2% | ₹15,500 |
| Hospitality, personal & care services | 8.34% | 294k | 39.7% | ₹13,500 |
| Protective services & armed forces | 8.08% | 285k | 58.9% | ₹20,000 |
| Transport & logistics | 6.69% | 236k | 15.8% | ₹18,000 |
| Engineering, science & technical | 6.52% | 230k | 16.0% | ₹20,000 |
| Health & medical | 4.77% | 168k | 50.6% | ₹12,000 |
| Finance & accounting | 3.27% | 115k | 10.5% | ₹17,500 |
| Teaching & education | 1.99% | 70k | 49.7% | ₹12,000 |
| Management & business operations | 1.91% | 67k | 10.8% | ₹20,000 |
| Software & IT | 0.99% | 35k | 22.3% | ₹20,000 |
| Agriculture, forestry & fishing | 0.72% | 25k | 29.1% | ₹12,000 |
| Law, public administration & policy | 0.59% | 21k | 95.1% | ₹10,000 |
| Arts, media, culture & social | 0.42% | 15k | 12.2% | ₹15,000 |
Sample sizes
Section titled “Sample sizes”| Cut | n |
|---|---|
| The rung, ages 21–34 | 56,073 |
| — in formal work | 3,997 |
| Formal, tenure under 1 year | 278 |
| Formal, tenure over 3 years | 2,431 |
| At age 40, in formal work | 777 |
| Earning ≥₹50,000 a month | 62 |
Cells are healthy throughout. This is one of the better-measured rungs on the ladder.
What this rung does not tell you
Section titled “What this rung does not tell you”It is a waiting room, not a destination. 15% are mid-qualification, and the people who leave are systematically those who were going to do best. Every employment figure here is depressed by that, and no adjustment in this analysis corrects for it.
The wage figures describe 7.38% of the rung.
No causation.
Provenance: assumptions governing this note are numbered in ../ASSUMPTIONS.md;
the queries behind every figure are in ../QUERIES.md; every claim’s confidence
grade, and the seven claims this analysis has retracted, are in
../FINDINGS.md. Check a number against FINDINGS before quoting it.