Morale among French consumers is at an all-time low and they are more pessimistic than ever about their future living standards, data showed today.
The figures add further to the gloom as France battles with unemployment.
The figures showed the euro zone's second-largest economy, hit by lagging trade competitiveness and a caught in a shallow recession, will not be able to count on its traditional driver - consumer spending - to rebound.
The weak growth will leave France's 2013 public deficit near 4% of economic output, overshooting an already revised target of 3.7% and further away from an EU goal of 3%.
Consumer confidence, which came in three points below analyst expectations of 81 and far below a long term average of 100, was the lowest since records began in 1972, data from statistics office INSEE showed.
Worryingly, households' view on how their standard of living would evolve also came in at the lowest in over four decades, while more people consider this is the right time to save and less and less plan important purchases.
The consumer confidence indicator has been worsening in parallel with jobless numbers, which edged up to a new all-time high of 3,264,500 in mainland France, labour ministry data showed earlier this week.
INSEE forecast last week that the economy would contract by 0.1% this year as subdued consumer demand weighs.
It said growth would be too weak for the economy to start creating new jobs and forecast that the unemployment rate would hit 11.1% by the end of the year, just shy of a 1997 record of 11.2%.
