Rung 06 — Diploma, non-technical
2.85 million people aged 21–34. 40.74% hold a regular salaried job, of which 25.80% of the rung is formal work.
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 |
11 “diploma in other subjects” (1,890) or 01 no technical education recorded (1,010) |
age |
21–34 |
Sample: 2,900 people across 2,202 first-stage units, representing 2.85 million.
The diploma holders whose diploma is not in a technical field. Two-thirds have a diploma explicitly coded “other subjects”; the remaining third hold a diploma-level general education with no technical qualification recorded at all — a combination that is coherent (a diploma in a non-technical subject) but worth knowing about, because it means this rung is defined partly by an absence.
A correction this rung embodies. The graduate analysis in
../../plfs/entry/ has a bucket called “Other diploma”
built from gedu_lvl='12' — graduates who additionally hold a diploma. Those are not diploma
holders. This rung is.
What they are doing
Section titled “What they are doing”| Share | People | |
|---|---|---|
| Formal work | 25.80% | 735k |
| Informal wage work | 20.29% | 578k |
| Self-employed, earning | 14.23% | 405k |
| Studying | 6.89% | 196k |
| Unemployed, seeking | 8.57% | 244k |
| Domestic duties | 13.34% | 380k |
A non-technical diploma delivers 25.80% formal employment against a technical diploma’s 30.77% — 5 percentage points less, but still 3.5 times the higher-secondary rate of 7.38% and 1.6 times a general degree’s 16.20%.
That is the more interesting comparison. Most of what a diploma buys is not the technical content: it is the diploma.
And this rung beats most technical fields. Rung 05’s 30.77% is carried entirely by engineering diplomas at 33.41%; diplomas in agriculture, medicine and crafts reach 22.51%, below this rung. The ordering is engineering, then non-technical, then everything else technical.
Gender
Section titled “Gender”| Share of rung | Formal work | Domestic duties | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | 69.2% | 31.44% | 0.04% | ₹18,000 | 1.97m |
| Female | 30.8% | 13.10% | 43.28% | ₹16,000 | 876k |
The gap is 2.4×, wider than the technical diploma’s 1.6×. Women are a larger share of this rung (30.8% against 23.6%) but do worse within it — 13.10% formal employment against 20.60% for women with a technical diploma. For women, the technical field matters far more than it does for men: it lifts their formal employment by 7.5 percentage points, against 2.5 points for men.
Urban and rural
Section titled “Urban and rural”| Share | Formal work | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rural | 59.9% | 20.84% | ₹16,000 | 1.71m |
| Urban | 40.1% | 33.23% | ₹20,000 | 1.14m |
What formal work pays, and whether it grows
Section titled “What formal work pays, and whether it grows”Monthly wage among the 25.80% in formal work, measured on tenure.
| Tenure | n | p25 | Median | p75 | p90 | ≥₹20k | ≥₹30k | ≥₹50k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 81 | ₹11,700 | ₹15,000 | ₹19,500 | ₹25,000 | 23.6% | 9.0% | 0.0% |
| 1 to 3 years | 247 | ₹13,000 | ₹17,000 | ₹23,500 | ₹30,000 | 41.8% | 14.3% | 2.2% |
| Over 3 years | 408 | ₹15,000 | ₹20,000 | ₹28,000 | ₹40,000 | 58.8% | 19.2% | 4.4% |
The median rises 1.33× over three-plus years — ₹15,000 to ₹20,000, almost identical to the technical diploma’s 1.34×. The difference between the two rungs is the level, not the growth: at every tenure step the technical diploma sits ₹1,000–1,500 higher, and its share above ₹30,000 at 3+ years is 30.8% against 19.2% here.
₹50,000 a month is cleared by 26 people out of 2,900.
Where the formal jobs are
Section titled “Where the formal jobs are”| Occupation | n | Share | Median wage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical equipment installers | 68 | 8.7% | ₹18,000 |
| Machinery mechanics and repairers | 49 | 8.0% | ₹18,000 |
| Primary school and early childhood teachers | 51 | 5.6% | ₹16,500 |
| Manufacturing labourers | 43 | 4.3% | ₹15,000 |
| Mining, manufacturing and construction supervisors | 28 | 3.7% | ₹24,300 |
| Medical and pharmaceutical technicians | 16 | 3.5% | ₹19,000 |
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.
Note what this reveals about the bucket. The top two occupations are electrical installers and
machinery mechanics — technical trades — despite this being the non-technical rung. Either the
tedu_lvl coding is imperfect for people who trained on the job, or a general diploma is a common
route into a technical trade. Either way the boundary between rungs 05 and 06 is softer than the
labels suggest, and the 5-point employment gap between them should be read with that in mind.
Teaching is the distinguishing occupation: primary and early-childhood teachers are 5.6% of formal work here and appear nowhere in the technical diploma’s top six.
Across a working life
Section titled “Across a working life”Synthetic cohort, not a projection.
| At entry (20–22) | Age 30 | Age 40 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample n | 720 | 550 | 273 |
| Population | 672k | 568k | 307k |
| — of whom in formal work | 109 | 166 | 104 |
| In formal work | 14.98% | 32.48% | 34.85% |
| Still studying | 30.57% | 0.27% | 0.00% |
| Mean wage | ₹15,677 | ₹23,537 | ₹37,747 |
| Median wage | ₹15,000 | ₹21,000 | ₹33,917 |
Twenty years multiply the mean wage by 2.41×. That is the largest number in the ladder’s lifecycle column, but the column is not comparable across rungs — each rung’s entry window sits at its own completion age, up to four years apart, and re-basing medicine to a common window takes it from 1.71× to 2.83×. Read the multiple down this rung, not against others.
What is comparable is the employment path: formal employment plateaus after 30 here (32.48% → 34.85%) where the technical rung keeps climbing (34.02% → 48.24%). The technical diploma’s advantage is durability, not starting position.
The age-40 cell holds 273 people, 104 of them in formal work. Treat that column as indicative.
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 | 31.6% | 16.4% | 700k |
| Age 30 | 44.5% | 32.5% | 568k |
| Age 40 | 45.1% | 34.9% | 307k |
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 | 37.99% | 279k | 10.9% | ₹17,500 |
| Engineering, science & technical | 11.05% | 81k | 11.3% | ₹24,000 |
| Health & medical | 9.55% | 70k | 32.0% | ₹20,000 |
| Clerical & office support | 7.83% | 58k | 39.9% | ₹16,000 |
| Sales & marketing | 7.37% | 54k | 8.6% | ₹16,000 |
| Teaching & education | 6.11% | 45k | 69.7% | ₹16,500 |
| Hospitality, personal & care services | 4.90% | 36k | 31.3% | ₹18,000 |
| Software & IT | 4.27% | 31k | 14.1% | ₹25,000 |
| Transport & logistics | 3.76% | 28k | 9.7% | ₹18,000 |
| Finance & accounting | 3.19% | 23k | 1.1% | ₹17,000 |
| Protective services & armed forces | 1.90% | 14k | 53.5% | ₹24,500 |
| Management & business operations | 1.51% | 11k | 22.9% | ₹45,000 |
| Law, public administration & policy | 0.43% | 3,195 | 62.0% | ₹20,000 |
| Agriculture, forestry & fishing | 0.11% | 840 | 0.0% | ₹15,000 |
Sample sizes
Section titled “Sample sizes”| Cut | n |
|---|---|
| The rung, ages 21–34 | 2,900 |
| — in formal work | 736 |
| Formal, tenure under 1 year | 81 |
| Formal, tenure over 3 years | 408 |
| At age 40, in formal work | 104 |
| Earning ≥₹50,000 a month | 26 |
This is one of the two thinnest rungs on the ladder. Every figure here is more uncertain than the equivalent for a school rung, and the age-40 and entry-tenure cells especially so.
What this rung does not tell you
Section titled “What this rung does not tell you”It is defined partly by an absence. A third of it holds a diploma with no technical qualification recorded, which may be a coding gap rather than a real characteristic.
The occupation mix contradicts the label. Technical trades dominate formal work on the non-technical rung, so the 05/06 boundary is not clean. The gap between the two rungs is real but its interpretation is not settled.
Selection, not 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.