Portugal's unemployment rate rose to 6.8% in the first quarter from 6.6% in the preceding three months, but was still below 7.2% reported a year earlier, the National Statistics Institute said on Wednesday.

The youth unemployment rate - encompassing those between the ages of 16 and 24 - dipped to 23.0% from 23.9% in the previous quarter and was above the 19.6% registered a year earlier.

The total number of those unemployed rose 3.8% to 368,200 people from the previous three months.

The total workforce rose 1.0% from the previous quarter to 5.4 million people. (Reporting by Joao Manuel Mauricio in Gdansk, editing by Andrei Khalip)