Portugal's monthly unemployment rate rose to 7.1% in January from a revised reading of 6.8% in December, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said in its flash estimate on Wednesday.

The labour underutilisation rate rose to 12.4%, up 0.2 percentage points from the previous month.

The youth unemployment rate (16-24 years old) increased to 21.2% in January, from 20.0% in the previous month and from 20.4% a year ago, the INE said. (Reporting by Joao Manuel Mauricio, and Maria Luiza Amaral in Gdansk, editing by Andrei Khalip)