Unemployment rate in urban India in the January-March quarter of 2020-21 cooled down further to 9.3% and inched closer to the pre pandemic level of 9.1% in the corresponding quarter of 2019-20 after touching an all-time high of 20.8% in the first quarter of 2020-21.The unemployment rates had stood at 13.2% in the July-September quarter and 10.3% in October-December quarter, shows the quarterly periodic labour force survey released by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation on Tuesday. Joblessness or unemployment rate (UR) is defined as the percentage of unemployed persons in the labour force. As per the survey, labour force participation rate for all ages stood at 47.5% in the fourth quarter compared to 48.1% in the corresponding quarter of the preceding fiscal. However, it has improved quarter-on-quarter after falling to a low of 45.9% in the April-June quarter. It stood at 47.2% in the second and 47.3% in the third quarter.Labour force according to CWS is the number of persons either employed or unemployed on an average in a week preceding the date of survey. LFPR is defined as the percentage of population in the labour force.As per the report released on Tuesday, the worker population ratio (WPR) during the fourth quarter of the last fiscal stood at 43.1%, higher than 42.4% in Oct0ber-December quarter, 40.9% in July-September quarter and an all-time low of 36.4% in April-June quarter.At the all-India level, in the urban areas, a total number of 5,601 FSUs (UFS blocks) have been surveyed during the quarter January – March 2021. The number of urban households surveyed was 44,000 and the number of persons surveyed was 1,72,484in urban areas.NSO launched PLFS in April 2017. The estimates of unemployed persons in current weekly status (CWS) give an average picture of unemployment in a short period of 7 days during the survey period.In the CWS approach, a person is considered unemployed if he or she did not work even for one hour on any day during the week but sought or was available for work at least for 1 hour on any day during the period.