Can caregiving become a viable profession in India? Explore training, certification, wages, career growth and social security for caregivers.
India is looking to professionalise caregiving as demand for care grows. But without recognised qualifications, reliable wages, career progression and social security, can the sector offer workers a sustainable livelihood?
An older person needs help getting out of bed. A patient recovering at home requires assistance through the day. A family looking after a relative with a long-term illness needs someone trained to provide daily support.
For many households, finding that help is only the beginning. They must also decide whether the person they hire has the right skills, whether the service can be trusted and whether they can afford it over the long term.
For the person providing care, another set of questions matters just as much: Is the work properly recognised? Can it provide a stable income? Will additional training lead to better employment? And what happens if the worker falls ill, suffers an injury or loses a job?
These questions sit at the heart of India’s emerging debate over caregiving as a profession.
On August 5, 2026, NITI Aayog released Reimagining Care: Strategies for Empowering Caregivers in Viksit Bharat@2047, outlining a vision for a more organised care system. The report recommends standardised training and certification, clearer career pathways, stronger professional recognition and improved social security for caregivers.
It presents caregiving as a potential source of skilled employment as India’s care needs grow. But the distance between recognising that potential and creating decent, sustainable jobs remains considerable.
The central challenge is not simply to train more caregivers. It is to build a profession in which training leads to work, experience leads to advancement and employment offers a measure of financial security.
From a job to a profession
Caregiving covers a wide range of responsibilities. A worker may assist an older person with daily activities, support someone with a disability, provide non-clinical assistance to a patient at home or work in an institutional care setting.
These roles do not all require the same skills. Some involve routine assistance, while others require specialised training, a clear understanding of safety and the ability to recognise when a person needs professional medical attention.
Yet the existence of different training courses does not, by itself, create a coherent career structure.
NITI Aayog’s report identifies the need for more consistent standards and competency-based training. It recommends a framework that could help establish what caregivers should know, what different qualifications mean and how workers can progress towards more specialised roles.
This matters because a certificate has limited value if employers do not recognise it or if it does not improve a worker’s employment prospects.
The report includes data on geriatric-care training under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) Special for 2023–24. Across the categories listed, it records 36,684 trained caregivers. These categories included elderly-care companions, wellness therapists for older people, institutional and home-care geriatric caregivers, and non-clinical elderly caretakers.
However, the report records employment placement as “not yet tracked” for these categories.
That does not mean the trainees failed to find jobs. It means the table does not provide placement figures with which to assess their employment outcomes.
The distinction is important. Training enrolment and completion can show that people have acquired skills, but they cannot establish whether those skills have translated into jobs, better wages or sustained employment.
For a sector seeking professional recognition, employment outcomes should be central to evaluating whether training programmes work.
What is a caregiver’s qualification worth?
A prospective caregiver needs more than a list of courses. They need to know which qualifications employers accept, whether training includes practical experience and whether completing a course can improve their prospects.
NITI Aayog recommends standardised curricula and certification, alongside recognition of prior learning. The latter could help experienced workers demonstrate their skills without necessarily having to repeat training they have already completed in practice.
The report also proposes a National Caregiver Council to help develop standards and professional pathways. This is a recommendation, not an already established regulator under the proposed framework.
If implemented, a coordinated system could help employers distinguish between different levels of training and make it easier for workers to understand the qualifications required for particular jobs.
It could also help prevent a situation in which people pay for training without knowing whether their certificate will be useful in the labour market.
For the system to be credible, however, standards must be accompanied by transparent information about course fees, eligibility, assessment, employment outcomes and opportunities for further training.
Professional recognition should mean more than giving an occupation a formal name. It should give workers a clearer route from learning a skill to earning a living from it.
The wage question cannot be ignored
Caregiving may offer employment opportunities, but the quality of those opportunities depends heavily on earnings.
A worker needs to know whether a job provides enough income to meet living costs, whether wages are paid regularly and whether experience or additional qualifications can lead to better pay.
Establishing a reliable national picture of caregiver earnings is difficult because the workforce spans different occupations and employment arrangements. A person working through an agency may have a different pay structure from someone hired directly by a household. Duties, working hours, qualifications and locations can also vary considerably.
Online salary estimates offer some indication of the range, but they must be treated cautiously. Indeed India’s salary pages in January 2026 reported an average of approximately ₹19,097 per month for home-care workers, based on five salary reports, and approximately ₹37,382 for caregivers, based on nine reports.
These small samples are not representative national wage surveys. The job titles may also describe different kinds of work, making direct comparisons difficult.
The figures therefore cannot establish what most caregivers in India earn. Instead, they highlight the need for better information.
A meaningful assessment would examine earnings by state, occupation, qualifications and employment arrangement. It would also consider working hours, overtime, rest days, accommodation deductions and whether workers receive payment between assignments.
Without such information, it is difficult for workers to judge whether caregiving offers a sustainable career or for policymakers to assess whether training and certification are improving earnings.
A profession cannot be judged by the number of vacancies it generates alone. The income those jobs provide, and the security attached to that income, matter just as much.
Can experience lead to better work?
A sustainable career needs a future beyond the first job.
In caregiving, progression could involve moving from entry-level assistance to specialised elderly care, disability support, supervisory responsibilities or training roles. Each step would require appropriate skills and a clear understanding of the responsibilities involved.
NITI Aayog recommends developing specialised caregiving capacity for people with needs associated with chronic illnesses, cancer, neurodegenerative conditions and ageing.
Such specialisation could help establish different career levels, allowing workers to build on their experience instead of remaining in the same role indefinitely.
But the pathway needs to be visible and credible. Workers should know which additional qualifications are required, whether employers recognise them and whether advanced skills translate into higher pay.
The distinction between caregiving and regulated clinical work must also remain clear. Caregivers can provide essential daily assistance, but medical procedures and clinical responsibilities must remain within the scope of appropriately qualified professionals.
Recognition of prior learning could be particularly useful for experienced workers whose practical knowledge has not been formally certified. A fair assessment process could help them obtain recognition while ensuring that competence and safety standards are maintained.
Without these pathways, training risks becoming a series of disconnected courses rather than the foundation of a career.
What happens when the job ends?
Professional recognition means little if workers remain exposed to avoidable financial and workplace risks.
Caregivers may work in private homes, through agencies or in residential facilities. The protections available to them can depend on the nature of the job and the employment arrangement.
Questions about written contracts, working hours, rest periods, occupational safety, payment disputes and access to complaint mechanisms are therefore central to any effort to professionalise the sector.
NITI Aayog recommends stronger social security and financial protection. Its proposals include considering the inclusion of caregivers within the framework of the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008, and providing protection against occupational injuries and diseases.
These are recommendations for further policy action, not proof that all caregivers currently have access to these protections.
The wider domestic-work sector illustrates why the issue deserves attention, although domestic workers and professional caregivers are not interchangeable groups.
In 2025, the International Labour Organization highlighted the challenges facing domestic workers in India, including low earnings and employment insecurity. Its findings from a study in Bihar showed that many of the workers surveyed earned between ₹2,000 and ₹3,000 per household per month while working across multiple part-time jobs.
Those figures should not be applied to caregivers nationwide. They nevertheless demonstrate the importance of examining the actual terms on which work is performed, rather than assuming that employment alone provides economic security.
For caregiving to become a viable profession, workers need clarity about their duties and pay, appropriate safeguards, and practical routes to seek help when employment arrangements break down.
The people receiving care also need protection through safe service standards, competent workers and effective mechanisms for addressing complaints.
A stronger framework must protect both.
Kerala’s proposed law brings regulation into focus
The debate is not limited to national recommendations.
On October 13, 2026, the Kerala Assembly introduced the Keralam Senior Citizens (Care and Protection of Rights) Bill, 2026, which was referred to a subject committee, according to The Indian Express.
The proposed legislation includes provisions for registration of elderly-care centres and caregivers, care standards and penalties for violations.
The bill offers a useful example of how a state might approach the regulation of elderly care. However, it remains proposed legislation at this stage. Its provisions should not be mistaken for requirements already in force under an enacted law.
Its significance lies in the questions it raises about accountability. How should care providers be registered? What standards should they meet? How should workers’ qualifications be assessed? And how can authorities ensure that regulation improves the quality of care without placing unreasonable barriers in the way of workers seeking employment?
Registration alone would not settle the larger employment question. A system could regulate providers while leaving wages, job security and social protection unresolved.
The broader national challenge is to connect regulation with professional development and decent working conditions.
Why women’s employment is part of the conversation
The future of paid caregiving also has implications for women’s economic participation.
India’s Time Use Survey 2024, published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, found that among people aged 15–59, 41 per cent of women participated in unpaid caregiving for household members, compared with 21.4 per cent of men.
Women in this age group spent an average of 140 minutes a day on unpaid caregiving, compared with 74 minutes for men.
These figures concern unpaid care within households, not paid employment in the caregiving sector. They nevertheless show that care responsibilities are unevenly distributed.
A more accessible paid-care system could create employment opportunities while helping families obtain support for older people and others who need assistance. It could also offer women an entry point into paid work.
But this potential should not be confused with a guarantee of better employment. If caregiving jobs offer inadequate wages, limited advancement and weak protections, professionalisation could reproduce existing inequalities rather than reduce them.
The goal must be to create jobs that are worth entering and possible to remain in, not simply to expand the workforce.
Beyond policy promises
NITI Aayog’s report places caregiving within India’s longer-term employment and social-care priorities. Its recommendations provide a direction for developing training standards, career pathways and worker protection. Kerala’s proposed legislation adds a state-level example of efforts to regulate elderly-care services.
The next test is implementation.
India needs more reliable information about how many people complete caregiving courses, how many obtain jobs, what they earn and whether additional qualifications lead to better opportunities. It also needs clearer arrangements for social security, workplace safety and grievance redressal.
The proposed National Caregiver Council could help coordinate standards if it is established with an effective mandate. But a new institution, like a new certificate, would not be enough on its own. Its value would depend on whether it improves the everyday experience of workers and the quality of care received by families.
For someone considering caregiving as a career, the questions are practical: Will employers recognise my training? Can I find work? Will experience improve my earnings? What protection will I have if I am injured or lose my job?
India’s ability to answer those questions will determine whether caregiving develops into a recognised profession or remains a sector where essential work does not always translate into a secure livelihood.
The measure of progress should not be how many people are trained alone. It should be whether workers can build sustainable careers while the people who depend on them receive safe, reliable and dignified care.
Sources for editorial verification
- NITI Aayog, Reimagining Care: Strategies for Empowering Caregivers in Viksit Bharat@2047, August 2026.
- Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Time Use Survey 2024.
- The Indian Express, coverage of the Keralam Senior Citizens (Care and Protection of Rights) Bill, 2026, October 2026.
- International Labour Organization, reporting on social protection and working conditions among domestic workers in India, 2025.
- Indeed India, salary estimates for home-care workers and caregivers, January 2026.
