Two-thirds of French pessimistic about future under François Hollande

A new Socialist president and a freshly appointed leftwing government have not made the French especially happy, according to a poll that found two-thirds are pessimistic about the future.

In the latest of a series of surveys carried out three months after François Hollande won office, 68% of those asked said they were worried for themselves and their family.

The level of Gallic gloominess comes close to the all-time high – or low – recorded in 2005 shortly after Jacques Chirac was elected for a second term in office, when the pessimism was shared by 70% of people. Hollande's predecessor as president, the right-of-centre Nicolas Sarkozy, made only 50% of French people fearful for the future.

Dimanche Ouest France, the newspaper that commissioned the survey, said 2005 was a "historic peak of measured pessimism" and that those with the most bleak outlook were those over 65 years old, small businessmen and women and the unemployed. The most cheerful, it declared, were labourers. "It's the first time that concern is so high at the start of a presidential mandate," the pollsters Ifop reported.

It is not only opposition voters who see dark clouds ahead: 58% of Socialist party supporters said they had found little comfort in having the left in power for the first time in 15 years.

A separate survey published a week ago found that Hollande's approval rating had steadily declined since his election victory in May, to 54%. The Socialist government has been hit by a 13-year high in unemployment and the announcement of widespread redundancies at Peugeot and the supermarket chain Carrefour.