As France's summer sales kicked off and millions prepared for long holidays, official data showed Thurday that French consumers are the gloomiest about their living standards for 21 years.

The index calculated by the national statistics institute INSEE showed the 12th monthly fall in a row, a steady decline almost since the election of a reforming centre-right government headed by Nicolas Sarkozy which is committed to raising buying power.

The index fell to minus 46 in June from minus 42 in May, a figure revised upwards, and now stands at the lowest point since it was established in its current form in 1987.

As the summer holiday season gets under way, a central factor in family life in France, all but one of the main facets of life measured by the index showed pessimism.

Wednesday also marked the beginning of France's official summer sales period when shops are allowed to mark down items, usually triggering frenetic buying across the country.

Of the areas of life covered by the INSEE survey, there was a decline in confidence on the outlook for living standards, assessment of recent trends in living standards and on current and future personal finances.

Confidence also fell for making big purchases, on the possibility of saving, and on prices and expectations of inflation.

In the last two years a long-standing and seemingly intractable problem in France, unemployment, has fallen markedly, and in June the opinion of households on this count was about steady.

The biggest fall in confidence concerned the outlook for living standards, which slumped by seven points to minus 57.

French consumers, like consumers elsewhere, are showing concern about recent steep rises in the the prices of food and particularly fuel, together with the cost of housing while the property market is clearly cooling after a decade-long boom.

They are also concerned about overall inflation which is also the main problem of the moment for the European Central Bank.

The data was published as the summer retail sales season got under way.

Meanwhile the government, under pressure because consumer gloom is in contrast to the thrust of its election campaign a year ago, insists that the overall effect of many reforms to free up the economy will take time to feed into people's lives.