French Household Sentiment Marks Time

Household confidence in France has steadied after along climb up from an historically weak level. Still, confidence has only a 36.5 percentile standing.

Living standards show mixed changes this month. Standards compared to the past 12 months are a bit better month-to-month, while looking ahead, they are weaker and fall by 3 survey points.

However, unemployment expectations have moved sharply higher for the month, rising to 51 in April from 47 in March, to a very high percentile standing at the 70.4 percentile mark.

Price developments are moderating with weaker readings compared to 12 months ago. The percentile standings for prices, however, are modest, below the 50-percentile mark, showing these are below median readings both looking backward and looking ahead.

The savings environment has worsened both on backward-looking and forward-looking savings responses. And the rankings for these environments are both very high.

The saving environments dove-tails with a spending environment that did improve on the month, remains weak, and has a ranking at its 34th percentile. The environment is very favorable to save and not very favorable to spend.

The financial situation is little-changed in the month either looking-forward or looking-backward. That is a rather odd result, given the uncertainty over tariffs; but then maybe when policy causes uncertainty viewpoints freeze. On a month-to-month comparison, we see stronger financial situation ranking looking back 12-months that has an above median percentile standing at 65.4; but looking ahead there is a below median standing at the 44.2 percentile.

The table also presents two columns tracking the economic shock from before Covid to before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and secondly from that point to date. What this shows generally is that at the time of the invasion, most of the survey items had improved upon their pre-Covid readings. One exception is that unemployment concerns were still further elevated. But then from pre-invasion forward, most readings are substantially weaker. But in comparison, the change in unemployment is strikingly higher.

On balance, France’s household responses seem to exhibit some stickiness that may be a product of uncertainly. The overall readings remain weak.