Rung 14 — Postgraduate, medical
0.20 million people aged 21–34. 67.50% hold a regular salaried job, of which 62.12% of the rung is formal work — the highest rate on the entire ladder. And it rests on 195 people.
Who is counted
Section titled “Who is counted”| Filter | Value |
|---|---|
release_id |
calendar_2025 |
visit |
V1 |
gedu_lvl |
13 — postgraduate |
tedu_lvl |
04 — technical degree in medicine |
age |
21–34 |
Sample: 195 people across 173 first-stage units, representing 0.20 million. An MD, MS, MDS or postgraduate nursing qualification — 19.0% of everyone holding a medical degree.
This is the smallest rung on the ladder and its caveats are proportionate. Everything below rests on 195 people, and the wage table on far fewer. It is reported because leaving postgraduates unsplit produced a materially wrong finding; it should not be quoted as a precise figure.
What they are doing
Section titled “What they are doing”| Share | People | |
|---|---|---|
| Formal work | 62.12% | 124k |
| Informal wage work | 5.11% | 10k |
| Self-employed, earning | 10.25% | 20k |
| Studying | 4.96% | 9,915 |
| Unemployed, seeking | 9.37% | 19k |
| Domestic duties | 6.63% | 13k |
The highest formal-employment rate and the lowest domestic-duties share of any rung. Against the medical degree’s 32.41%, the postgraduate qualification nearly doubles it — consistent with that rung being largely nursing and allied health while this one is largely specialists.
Gender
Section titled “Gender”| Share of rung | Formal work | Domestic duties | Median wage | People | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | 45.0% | 64.04% | 0.00% | ₹50,000 | 90k |
| Female | 55.0% | 60.55% | 12.06% | ₹45,500 | 110k |
The narrowest gender gap on the ladder — 1.06× — on a majority-female rung, with a wage gap of 9%. Only 12% of women here are in domestic duties, against 42% for a general master’s.
What formal work pays
Section titled “What formal work pays”| Tenure | n | p25 | Median | p75 | ≥₹50k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 8 | ₹16,000 | ₹30,000 | ₹41,000 | 2.7% |
| 1 to 3 years | 35 | ₹25,000 | ₹50,000 | ₹95,000 | 73.6% |
| Over 3 years | 64 | ₹39,000 | ₹50,000 | ₹74,500 | 56.6% |
Do not read this table as measurement. The cells hold 8, 35 and 64 people; the 1–3 year row showing a higher ≥₹50k share than the 3+ row is noise, not a career pattern. What survives is the level: a medical postgraduate in formal work earns around ₹50,000 a month, roughly double the medical degree’s ₹35,000.
Across a working life
Section titled “Across a working life”| At entry (27–29) | Age 30 | Age 40 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample n | 62 | 57 | 40 |
| Population | 67k | 62k | 30k |
| — in formal work | 32 | 38 | 24 |
| In formal work | 70.90% | 73.57% | 61.93% |
| Median wage | ₹50,000 | ₹48,000 | ₹62,000 |
The entry window here is 27–29, and getting it right changed the answer. An MD or MS is three years after MBBS, so a medical postgraduate qualifies at about 26.5. An earlier version applied the 23–25 window used for a general master’s, which caught people mid-training and reported entry employment of 32.42% — less than half the true figure. Only 2.6% of this rung is even aged 21–23.
The mean wage is not shown at entry because it is not usable: ₹108,495 on 32 people, against a median of ₹50,000. One or two high earners carry it. The median is the only wage figure here worth reading, and even that rests on tiny cells.
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 | 62.5% | 55.5% | 55k (n=57 — too thin to read as a rate) |
| Age 30 | 74.8% | 73.6% | 62k (n=57 — too thin to read as a rate) |
| Age 40 | 61.9% | 61.9% | 30k (n=40 — too thin to read as a rate) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health & medical | 79.61% | 99k | 30.3% | ₹55,000 |
| Teaching & education | 9.62% | 12k | 21.4% | ₹40,000 |
| Engineering, science & technical | 5.60% | 6,952 | 40.8% | ₹39,000 |
| Management & business operations | 1.89% | 2,342 | 0.0% | ₹60,000 |
| Sales & marketing | 1.40% | 1,732 | 0.0% | ₹20,000 |
| Software & IT | 0.83% | 1,029 | 0.0% | ₹65,000 |
| Clerical & office support | 0.47% | 578 | 0.0% | ₹17,000 |
| Arts, media, culture & social | 0.44% | 547 | 0.0% | ₹55,000 |
| Hospitality, personal & care services | 0.15% | 188 | 100.0% | ₹12,000 |
Sample sizes
Section titled “Sample sizes”| Cut | n |
|---|---|
| The rung, 21–34 | 195 |
| — in formal work | 107 |
| Formal, tenure under 1 year | 8 |
| Earning ≥₹50,000 a month | 56 |
The smallest numbers in this analysis. The 62.12% employment rate, on 195 people, is the one figure here worth quoting — and only with the sample size attached.
What this rung does not tell you
Section titled “What this rung does not tell you”Doctors are not separable from postgraduate nurses at this sample size.
Nothing about the wage trajectory — the cells cannot support it.
Selection, not causation, and severe selection at that: this is the 19% of medical-degree holders who continued.
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.