PARIS, May 28 (Xinhua) -- French households were less confident of the country's economic performance in May than a month earlier as the consumer confidence index lost four points, hitting the lowest level since 2008, French national statistics bureau Insee said Tuesday.
The consumers' sentiment about future economy declined to minus 65 this month from minus 63 a month earlier, "reaching a new historically lowest level."
Household appreciation for their past financial balance declined by 10 points, and 3 points for the future compared to April's data and thus they think it's not good time for making major purchases, according to the monthly economic survey.
As to unemployment rate, more people predicted for an increase of joblessness in the future as the index hit four-year high to stand at 81 points, up by 6 points from a month before, the report showed.
According to the Labor Ministry's figures, 36,900 more jobseekers entered the domestic sluggish job market in March, or up by 1.2 percent to more than 3.224 million unemployed people.
With an ailing finances, France, Europe's second key economy, was eager to reach 0.1-percent growth this year, and to quicken the rate to 1.2 percent in 2014 and 2.0 percent annually between 2015 and 2017 to digest the growing job demands.
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