Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set up two cabinet panels to spur investment and employment. 

The Cabinet Committee on Investment & Growth will have four other members — home minister Amit Shah, highways and MSME minister Nitin Gadkari, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and commerce & railways minister Piyush Goyal. 

The Cabinet Committee on Employment & Skill Development has 10 members and, apart from Shah, Sitharaman and Goyal, they include agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan and skill development minister Mahendra Nath Pandey. The other three members are labour minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar, housing and urban development minister Hardeep Singh Puri and HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal. 

The Periodic Labour Force Survey of the National Sample Survey Office released on Friday showed that the unemployment rate in the country was 5.3% in rural India and 7.8% in urban India, resulting in an overall unemployment rate of 6.1% during 2017-18. 

The unemployment rate was at a 45-year high, although the government said the numbers were not comparable with earlier periods because of a change in methodology.