Unemployment rate during each office-holder's tenure, worldwide

628 offices, from presidents to mayors, in 39 countries, ranked against one another by how the unemployment rate changed from each office-holder's first day in office, each on its own country's figures. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

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#	Office-holder	Place	In office	Total	Per year
1	PSOE José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero	Spain Prime Minister	16 Apr 2004 – 20 Dec 2011	+11.5 pp Mar 2004 → Nov 2011	+1.5 pp/yr
2	AKEL Dimitris Christofias	Cyprus President	28 Feb 2008 – 28 Feb 2013	+11.0 pp Jan 2008 → Jan 2013	+2.2 pp/yr
3	KIDISO Giorgos Papandreou	Greece Prime Minister	6 Oct 2009 – 11 Nov 2011	+10.7 pp Sep 2009 → Oct 2011	+5.1 pp/yr
4	D Oscar Goodman	Las Vegas Mayor · United States	8 Jun 1999 – 1 Jan 2011	+10.5 pp May 1999 → Dec 2010	+0.9 pp/yr
5	Kesk Esko Aho	Finland Prime Minister	26 Apr 1991 – 13 Apr 1995	+9.9 pp Mar 1991 → Mar 1995	+2.5 pp/yr
6	MDB José Melo de Oliveira	Amazonas Governor · Brazil	4 Apr 2014 – 9 May 2017	+9.7 pp Q1 2014 → Q1 2017	+3.2 pp/yr
7	Golkar Nana Nuriana	West Java Governor · Indonesia	22 May 1993 – 13 Jun 2003	+9.6 pp 1992 → 2002	+1.0 pp/yr
8	FF Brian Cowen	Ireland Taoiseach	7 May 2008 – 9 Mar 2011	+9.5 pp Apr 2008 → Feb 2011	+3.4 pp/yr
9	R Jim Gibbons	Nevada Governor · United States	1 Jan 2007 – 3 Jan 2011	+9.2 pp Dec 2006 → Dec 2010	+2.3 pp/yr
10	PP Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón	Madrid Mayor · Spain	14 Jun 2003 – 27 Dec 2011 from 2004	+8.9 pp 2004 → 2011	+1.3 pp/yr

Showing 10 of 2050 tenures.

Sorted by total, highest first. Rows measure the share of the labour force out of work, as each statistics office surveys it (age bands and survey months differ); each place is read from its own statistics office's series (the row's chart names it), so a change is set against the place's own first day, never against another country's level. Every row is indexed to the last month, quarter or count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that period had no data, or because the period cut it). Changes are differences in pp; "per year" divides them by the years in office. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. Data as of Sep 2026.