LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal’s monthly unemployment rate fell below 10 percent in February for the first time in eight years and slipped further to 9.8 percent in March, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Friday.

The INE revised the February rate to 9.9 percent from the provisional estimate of 10 percent reported last month.

According to the provisional monthly unemployment data for March, the youth unemployment rate of those aged 15 to 24 fell to 23.3 percent in March from 24.4 percent in February and from 31.1 percent a year ago.

The total number of those unemployed fell to 504,000 people from 508,300 in February, while the employed workforce increased slightly to 4.65 million, the INE said.