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Unemployment Rate Spiked To Record 27.1% In April: Think-Tank CMIE
05 May 2020, 09:44 AM IST 
The report comes as India enters Day 2 of lockdown 3.0 meant to stem the COVID-19 disease
- Withdrawal of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown - the third phase of which ends on May 17 - is expected to yield quick results on the livelihood front, according to the CMIE.
- The CMIE Unemployment Survey was started in 2016, and since then, it has been a proxy for evaluating the state of labour market in the country. The labour force consists of all employed persons, persons who are unemployed and are actively looking for jobs.
- The survey has a sample size of 43,600 households per month, well-distributed geographically across urban and rural areas.
- Many economists have already lowered their projections, with some even warning about the possibility of a recession due to the COVID-19 disease-induced lockdown. The country's economy was suffering from a prolonged period of slow growth even before the lockdown, which began on March 25.
- Many ratings groups have estimated a much worse situation for the economy due to the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.
- Fitch Ratings has said India's GDP may expand 2 per cent in financial year 2021 - the slowest pace since the liberisation of the economy 30 years ago.
- Moody's has cut its forecast for the country's GDP expansion to 0.2 per cent in 2020, marking a sharp downward revision compared to its projection of 2.5 per cent in the previous month.
- The country had tallied more than 40,000 new Covid-19 cases and 1,500 deaths as of Tuesday morning.
- In March, the government unveiled a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package of free food grains and cash transfers to the poor to aid their fight against the pandemic.
- The central bank also announced several steps to ease the pressure faced by borrowers, lenders and other entities, including mutual funds. It has injected funds amounting to 3.2 per cent of GDP into the economy since the February 2020 monetary policy meeting in order to tackle the liquidity situation arising from the Covid-19 induced lockdown.
