The Workforce Behind the Blueprint: India’s Construction Opportunity

by Nitin Dave, CEO – Staffing Solutions, Quess Corp

India’s construction sector is expanding at a steady pace, with growth of around 7% in FY 2025–26, as indicated in the first advance estimates of the National Statistics Office. This is further supported by the scale of public investments being committed to infrastructure, with the Union Budget 2026-27 raising capital expenditure by ~9% to ₹12.2 lakh crore, continuing the country’s focus on roads, rail, and urban development.

This project pipeline reflects the steady effort into on-ground activity across highways, metro networks, airports, and housing projects, with execution spread across both large cities and emerging regional corridors. As project volumes increase and timelines tighten, the requirement has moved beyond labour availability to a formally trained workforce that can be deployed at scale across sites.

A Sector That Deserves Better Numbers
Construction remains one of the largest sources of employment in the country, accounting for around 12–13% of the workforce, with 2023 estimates placing total employment at close to 70 million. A significant share of this workforce continues to operate without formal training, with skills acquired primarily on the job. While this has supported the sector’s expansion, it also leads to variation in productivity, workmanship, and safety practices. As project complexity increases and timelines become more defined, these differences begin to affect delivery outcomes, often in the form of delays, rework, and higher execution costs.

The deeper issue is what happens once workers do develop real expertise. Many move overseas, where wages are better and skills are formally recognised. We are, in effect, preparing workers for someone else’s infrastructure boom. For those who gain experience over time, formal recognition of skills and structured progression pathways remain limited. Movement from entry-level roles to certified trades and supervisory positions is not always clearly defined, which affects both retention and long-term capability within the sector.

The sector has traditionally relied on subcontracting networks to meet workforce requirements. While this has helped projects scale, it has also led to uneven hiring and skill checks across sites. As a result, workforce quality and continuity are not always consistent, particularly in projects with tighter timelines and higher technical requirements.

This inconsistency is often rooted in the personal toll of migration. For the millions of workers who move to cities for months at a time, finding safe and dignified accommodation remains a primary struggle. When a worker is forced into overcrowded or substandard housing far from the site, the resulting fatigue and lack of stability directly bleed into project performance. Solving the housing bottleneck is not just a social imperative; it is a prerequisite for a stable, high-output workforce.

For project stakeholders, these gaps are often reflected in execution challenges. Delays in EPC projects remain a recurring concern, with workforce-related constraints forming part of the broader set of factors affecting delivery. In such cases, the impact extends beyond timelines to cost management and contractual obligations.

The Opportunity in Front of Us
The construction sector is projected to need 100 million workers by 2030, adding roughly 8 million formal jobs every year. That scale of demand cannot be met by the same fragmented, informal approach that has defined the industry for decades. The encouraging part is that the groundwork for change already exists.

The government has made meaningful moves in the right direction. Initiatives like e-Shram registration are already channelling benefits to millions of construction workers and building a verifiable, formal identity for the unorganised workforce. The One Nation One Ration Card scheme ensures migrant workers don’t lose entitlements when they move between states for work. Skilling programmes under PM-VIKAS and state-level collaborations are certifying workers and bringing them into the formal fold. These are strong foundations, and what they need now is scale, consistency, and stronger momentum on the ground.

Private employers also have a meaningful part to play in accelerating this shift. Moving away from cash-in-hand hiring and toward structured, formal employment with proper contracts, defined roles, and basic benefits is where the change becomes real. Investing in pre-deployment training rather than managing costly errors on site is not just good practice, it is sound business. A useful measure of progress would be when employers begin tracking worker retention and formalisation rates with the same rigour they bring to project delivery timelines.

When Construction Work Becomes Formal Work, Everyone Wins
Construction is a profession that literally builds the country we live in. The mason, the electrician, the bar bender, they deserve the same formal protections, career growth, and community respect as any other skilled professional. Formalization is the mechanism that transforms these aspirations into reality. By moving from a fragmented system to a formal one, we can ensure that every worker has a digital trail for their skills, access to portable social security that follows them across state lines, and institutional support for dignified living and housing. This shift provides the security a migrant worker needs to stop viewing their work as a temporary struggle and start seeing it as a sustainable career.

India has the ambition, the investment, and an enormous workforce ready to rise to the occasion. With the right formal structures in place, backed by policy, embraced by employers, and supported by communities, India’s construction workforce will not just grow in numbers. It will grow in dignity, capability, and pride. And that is the foundation every great infrastructure story is built on.