Certified to Build: Skill Certification, Earnings and Job Security Among Construction Workers in India

Abstract

India certifies the skills of construction workers on the assumption that a recognised certificate will raise their pay and make their work more secure. This paper examines that assumption through a critical synthesis of national labour statistics, the government's evaluation of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), a national audit of the scheme, two construction-specific impact studies and peer-reviewed wage research, supported by an exploratory interview with a site manager at a residential developer in Pune. The available evidence is associated with modest reported earnings gains after Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). The most common gain workers report is 5 to 10 per cent, and in one construction survey the share reporting any rise (52 per cent) is not clearly above half. The evidence for a direct effect on job security is weaker still, and none of the construction studies establishes a causal effect of certification. The paper proposes, as a hypothesis rather than a finding, that contractor-mediated hiring limits the value of certificates: in fieldwork around Delhi, 84 per cent of construction workers were hired through labour contractors, and the developer interviewed does not inspect individual certificates when setting pay or deployment. The paper sets out a research design to test this mechanism directly and distinguishes low-cost administrative improvements from policy changes whose effects remain untested.