Rung 05 — Diploma, technical
4.06 million people aged 21–34. 46.18% hold a regular salaried job, of which 30.77% of the rung is formal work — nearly twice the rate of a general degree.
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 |
11 — “Literate: diploma/certificate course” |
tedu_lvl |
07 agriculture, 08 engineering/technology, 09 medicine, 10 crafts |
age |
21–34 |
Sample: 3,921 people across 2,900 first-stage units, representing 4.06 million.
Engineering diplomas dominate: 3,000 of the 3,921 (77%), then medicine 790, crafts 96, agriculture 35. Anyone whose diploma is in “other subjects” is on rung 06, not here.
And the domination matters, because the fields diverge sharply. Engineering diplomas reach 33.41% formal employment; agriculture, medicine and crafts together reach 22.51% — below the non-technical rung’s 25.80%. This rung’s headline 30.77% is an engineering number. A technical diploma in anything else does worse than a general one.
Two corrections this rung embodies
Section titled “Two corrections this rung embodies”One. The graduate analysis in ../../plfs/entry/
has buckets named “Technical diploma” and “Other diploma”. Those are built from gedu_lvl='12' —
graduates who additionally hold a diploma, 4,496 people. They are not diploma holders. This rung
is the real diploma population, and it was absent from that analysis entirely.
Two. An earlier version of this file defined technical as tedu_lvl != '01', which swept in
code 11, “diploma in other subjects” — 1,890 people at 25.4% formal employment. That diluted the
rung from 33.4% to 29.1%. Technical now means a technical field.
What they are doing
Section titled “What they are doing”| Share | People | |
|---|---|---|
| Formal work | 30.77% | 1.25m |
| Informal wage work | 18.98% | 771k |
| Self-employed, earning | 13.43% | 546k |
| Studying | 7.76% | 315k |
| Unemployed, seeking | 8.30% | 337k |
| Domestic duties | 9.72% | 395k |
This is the largest single step on the whole ladder. Higher secondary reaches 7.38% formal employment; a technical diploma reaches 30.77% — more than four times.
Not, however, straightforwardly “the rung above higher secondary”. Most Indian polytechnic diplomas
follow class 10, and PLFS cannot distinguish the two entry routes —
no_of_years_in_formal_education is entirely NULL in this release. For many people here the honest
comparison is secondary’s 5.95%, which makes the step larger. The size of the gap is not in doubt;
its position on an ordinal ladder is.
It also beats a general degree (16.20%) by nearly two to one, and comes within striking distance of a postgraduate degree (29.11%) — at a fraction of the time and cost.
Domestic duties collapse to 9.72%, from 28.36% at higher secondary. Unemployment rises to 8.30%, the highest so far: people with this qualification search for work rather than leaving the labour force.
Gender
Section titled “Gender”| Share of rung | Formal work | Domestic duties | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | 76.4% | 33.91% | 0.08% | ₹20,000 | 3.11m |
| Female | 23.6% | 20.60% | 40.94% | ₹18,000 | 958k |
The gender gap narrows sharply here — 1.6×, against 4.7× at higher secondary. A woman with a technical diploma is eight times more likely to hold a formal job than a woman with only class 12 (20.60% against 2.52%), and the wage gap nearly closes: ₹18,000 against men’s ₹20,000.
The catch is who gets here: women are 23.6% of this rung against roughly half of every school rung. The qualification works for women who obtain it; few do.
Urban and rural
Section titled “Urban and rural”| Share | Formal work | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rural | 59.0% | 24.16% | ₹17,000 | 2.40m |
| Urban | 41.0% | 40.28% | ₹20,000 | 1.67m |
What formal work pays, and whether it grows
Section titled “What formal work pays, and whether it grows”Monthly wage among the 30.77% in formal work, measured on tenure.
| Tenure | n | p25 | Median | p75 | p90 | ≥₹20k | ≥₹30k | ≥₹50k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 111 | ₹12,000 | ₹16,000 | ₹20,000 | ₹30,000 | 29.3% | 9.5% | 2.9% |
| 1 to 3 years | 424 | ₹15,000 | ₹18,000 | ₹25,000 | ₹34,000 | 44.2% | 14.3% | 2.2% |
| Over 3 years | 632 | ₹15,000 | ₹21,500 | ₹30,000 | ₹42,856 | 58.3% | 30.8% | 5.1% |
The median rises 1.34× over three-plus years — ₹16,000 to ₹21,500. More striking is the share above ₹30,000, which triples from 9.5% to 30.8%. A technical diploma buys entry to a wage band that does not exist below it: at higher secondary only 17.3% clear ₹30,000 even after three years.
₹50,000 a month is cleared by 58 people out of 3,921. Real but rare — 5.1% of those with 3+ years of tenure.
Where the formal jobs are
Section titled “Where the formal jobs are”| Occupation | n | Share | Median wage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering professionals | 81 | 7.0% | ₹30,000 |
| Electrical equipment installers | 88 | 6.6% | ₹18,000 |
| Machinery mechanics and repairers | 90 | 6.4% | ₹18,000 |
| Mining, manufacturing and construction supervisors | 75 | 6.3% | ₹25,000 |
| Nursing and midwifery professionals | 57 | 4.8% | ₹18,000 |
| Medical and pharmaceutical technicians | 36 | 3.8% | ₹17,000 |
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.
The occupation mix is the point. Below this rung, formal work is labour, cleaning, driving, security and clerical. Here the top categories are engineering professionals, installers, mechanics and supervisors — skilled trades with names. Seven percent are recorded as engineering professionals at ₹30,000, doing work otherwise associated with a degree.
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 (20–22) | Age 30 | Age 40 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample n | 980 | 731 | 311 |
| Population | 1.05m | 780k | 327k |
| — of whom in formal work | 157 | 256 | 143 |
| In formal work | 18.31% | 34.02% | 48.24% |
| Still studying | 33.36% | 0.21% | 0.00% |
| Mean wage | ₹16,026 | ₹24,968 | ₹36,854 |
| Median wage | ₹15,000 | ₹21,500 | ₹32,532 |
Twenty years multiply the mean wage by 2.30×, and by 40 nearly half hold a formal job.
Do not rank that multiple against other rungs. Each rung’s entry window sits at its own completion age, so the denominators are measured up to four years apart. Medicine’s entry is 24–26; put it on this rung’s 20–22 basis and its multiple goes from 1.71× to 2.83×, moving it from near the bottom of the ladder to the top. The multiples are readable down a column, not across rungs.
A third are still studying at 20–22, so the entry column is diluted the same way higher secondary’s is; some of those go on to a degree and leave this 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 | 36.6% | 21.2% | 1.05m |
| Age 30 | 51.1% | 34.0% | 780k |
| Age 40 | 57.5% | 48.2% | 327k |
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 | 33.25% | 416k | 12.1% | ₹18,000 |
| Engineering, science & technical | 21.39% | 267k | 9.8% | ₹25,000 |
| Health & medical | 15.08% | 189k | 32.5% | ₹18,000 |
| Sales & marketing | 9.49% | 119k | 3.1% | ₹19,200 |
| Clerical & office support | 7.75% | 97k | 40.0% | ₹16,500 |
| Software & IT | 2.71% | 34k | 4.1% | ₹30,000 |
| Transport & logistics | 2.51% | 31k | 13.0% | ₹16,000 |
| Management & business operations | 1.81% | 23k | 0.3% | ₹35,000 |
| Hospitality, personal & care services | 1.76% | 22k | 40.0% | ₹15,000 |
| Finance & accounting | 1.68% | 21k | 4.1% | ₹18,600 |
| Protective services & armed forces | 1.41% | 18k | 58.0% | ₹24,000 |
| Teaching & education | 0.96% | 12k | 29.3% | ₹18,000 |
| Agriculture, forestry & fishing | 0.11% | 1,433 | 100.0% | ₹12,000 |
| Law, public administration & policy | 0.08% | 1,018 | 100.0% | ₹42,000 |
Sample sizes
Section titled “Sample sizes”| Cut | n |
|---|---|
| The rung, ages 21–34 | 3,921 |
| — in formal work | 1,167 |
| Formal, tenure under 1 year | 111 |
| Formal, tenure over 3 years | 632 |
| At age 40, in formal work | 143 |
| Earning ≥₹50,000 a month | 58 |
Cells are adequate throughout. The age-40 column, at 311 people, is the thinnest thing here and its mean wage should be read as indicative.
What this rung does not tell you
Section titled “What this rung does not tell you”It is 77% engineering diplomas. Statements about “technical diplomas” are mostly statements about engineering diplomas; agriculture (n=35) and crafts (n=96) are too small to read separately.
Selection, not causation. People who take a technical diploma differ from those who stop at class 12. The four-fold employment gap is what the two groups look like, not what the diploma did.
The wage figures describe 30.77% of the rung — the highest coverage of any rung so far, but still under a third.
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.