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I seem to have run into the issue of having too low unemployment with no way to handle the problem short of deactivating every single building on my land. It doesn't matter what scenario and region I play(in the demo), but once I get below 3% unemployment I am on a downward spiral to constant labor shortages. I basically have to deactive a rear base, just to activate a newly captured forward base/airstrip. Which is fine for a scenario, but I am not so sure I want to leave my rear uncovered while I am pushing forward into another region in the full game.

I have been working on my strategy, and I have slowed down the progression when dropping below 3% and it helped alot.

My issue comes with the fact that there is no unemployment change after conquering another region. Most recent example I have, is the France scenario, with combined regions.(France vs Spain vs Portugal)

My unemployment was sitting at around 1.5%, and France had a population of about 50 million. Spain attacked me, so I stomped them into the dirt and took all their land. Spain had about 30-40 million people. The problem is, my unemployment didn't change a bit. This is not realistic unless Spain also had 1.5% unemployment, which I highly doubt. Spain probably had 3-6% unemployment.

If spain had a 3% unemplyment, at the least this would have brought my unemployment to 2% once I assimilated all their people and territory. I don't know where the people are going, but they aren't working for me.

This was an old thread in the Bugs section. Since it got no more attention I believe this is just an economy issue so have moved it to the correct thread.

Decimatus is right. It looks like there is no way to increase unemployment, neitgher by capturing population or by positive migration/birth. It's even hard / impossible by deactivating industries. Maybe the game calculates the unemployment with the population settings at the start of the scenario?

Also in my opinion unemployment should increase if one invests in production efficiency (i think there are similar opinions out there in the forums).

get an immigration treaty with a country that is at war and you will have some new citizens to fill those jobs

I've found a method (this only works if your inflation is high). I've came to realize that if your inflation is high (higher than 3-4 %) you will face labor shortages. So I've decreased my inflation and the unemployment went up. But I agree to a point you've made; that the system needs to be changed because as an example if you have a region that has 80 M population, after you build a few industries the unemployment goes down to low to quickly and it is much harder to bring it up again than to bring it down (that's why i have deactivate buildings all the time too).

To compensate the annoyance I think the best solution would be to put the number of people that work in each industry so that we can calculate and adjust our population accordingly; i.e. in an ore mining facility say 2 M people working at this industry... I think this would help a lot.

Increase taxes.

When you increase both personal and corporate taxes, people are less likley to get a job. Not only because they get less, which is less motivation, but also because of oppurtunity.

Bayern is correct suggesting to increase taxes. Increasing personal taxes decreases demand and therefore most likely your production. By increasing corporate taxes you decrease the pressure on employment as they have less to compete for workers.

Some other tricks would be to decrease social spending, especially education, as that also increases employment. Increasing medical social spending increase population faster and can help reduce GDP/c. Another tax to increase would be the Activity tax as well as teh Property Tax. Those will dump demand and that will help reduce inflation and employment. You can also jack up efficiency spending in commerce as that will also decrease employment by reducing corporate profits.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen