Employment/Unemployment????

[Eric Larsen]

I've been puzzling over the employment/unemployment conundrum. The manual tells me that if I build resource sites and commodity factories that I will increase my employment. I'm still not seeing this when I build lots of these to increase my employment.

In the US-California scenario I'm learning on as Southern California I decide to scrap 2 coal electricity plants, deactivate the other and deactivate the smaller nuke plant. I know I'm going to take a hit on unemployment to start the scenario. To counter that I start building something everyday, like the vitamin one-a-day. The first day I build a consumer goods factory that I know will take about 2 months to complete. The second day I build a timber resource site. Then on odd days I build something expensive like consumer goods, industrial goods or water plants. On even days I build timber sites. I'd get 6 timber plants, 3 water plants, 2 consumer goods and 2 industrial goods plants constructing before I stop that cycle and wait for completion of something before building another new one like water or timber. After the first two consumer and industrial plants come online I know I can then upgrade smaller factories.

After about 3 months I have brought online over a dozen timber plants, a half dozen water plants, 2 each of consumer goods and industrial goods and I tossed in a research center, a supply depot and a small military base. Even after all that construction I still kept watching that relentless march toward massive unemployment. I even tried cutting down production efficiency hoping that that not only increased my production price but also decreased worker productivity which would increase employment. I cut taxes also to try to boost demand and employment, raised my immigration fee to gain negative net immigration, but nothing I did seemed to do a thing to alter that downward decline of employment.

I would think that construction of resource sites and factories would boost employment as it takes workers to build those structures and that should be new employment. When each facility comes online it should also add employees to the payroll. One thing I noticed was that the research centers have no personnel??? Even a supply depot has 1,500 personnel so I'm thinking that research centers should also add around 1,500 employees. Otherwise research centers look like nothing more than buildings built around a big Cray supercomputer and R&D is done by AI solely.

The other big unknown is that nebulous "service" sector (of which I'm a proud member in real life). It sure would be nice if there were some kind of reading that shows us the level of service sector employment so we can see if it gains or loses. This would go a long way for helping us understand how employment is rising or lowering and as long as it is an unknown then there is no way to truly tell if the employment/unemployment model is working properly.

I also hope that the production efficiency percentage not only affects unit cost but also worker productivity. As one decreases production efficiency investment that should cause not only a rise in production price but also a lessening of worker productivity. As that production efficiency decreases it would raise production prices but also increase employment as worker efficiency decreases.

I think that if the unemployment rate and inflation models are fixed so as not to be so nebulous and that the controls the game already has are made to affect these items the way they should then the economic model will be about as realistic as you can get it. Then players will have a chance at understanding how economics works in the game and can enjoy that function as much as the actual wargame aspect.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[Fordson]

don't get too picky about the economic model. I have the same comments that you have, but the developers have also stressed that this is a game. The model has been simplified to allow more work on the warfare code and to allow people with only a vague understanding of economics to play it. I consider myself an expert in economics and find the model is NOT real world. A real economic simulator would not be a simple game like this, but would be very complex and have historical data and charts to help understand the relationships of change and effect over time.

I personally enjoyed the game while I played it, but now am using Vensim to build a more realistic macroeconomic mode of my own. This game just got me more interested and I need to go on my own to make what I really want.

But, I do have to say that this game has done the best with this theme compared to other titles of the same genre.

[Eric Larsen]

Fordson,
While SR2010 is a game that does not mean the economic model has to be some nebulous source of frustration. The game has some mechanics already in place that if made to work a bit more realistically would help greatly in making the economic model more understandable and manageable.

When the manual says build more factories and resource sites and put your people to work then I should expect to see some improvement on rising unemployment when I do follow the manual's suggestion.
When that doesn't happen then one must let the company know that there may be a fly in their ointment.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[Seydlitz]

While on the topic, I am curious as to whether soldiers in reserve are still active members of the workforce, since, they should be. I can't really figure it out without workforce numbers...

[Eric Larsen]

While on the topic, I am curious as to whether soldiers in reserve are still active members of the workforce, since, they should be. I can't really figure it out without workforce numbers...

Seydlitz,
Good question. I was telling my minister to increase the reserves as a means of increasing employment but that sure didn't seem to work. Are the reserves part of the workforce for military installations or do military installations employ people directly from the employment pool?

What about employment gains from turning reserves into active military personnel? Wouldn't that turn civilian employees into military employees and thus free up civilian employment for unemployed people to gain employment?

Why aren't there any personnel listed for research centers? There should be some employment gain from building new research centers the same as military bases and supply depots. Right now research centers seem to employ no people which should be corrected.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[The_Blind_One]

Good question. I was telling my minister to increase the reserves as a means of increasing employment but that sure didn't seem to work. Are the reserves part of the workforce for military installations or do military installations employ people directly from the employment pool?

Yes they do...in a sense...

cuz u know...I know this is hard to take and all...there is no unemployment pool!

This is all that counts.
You've got ur gdp/c
You've got ur inflation
You've got ur ''unemployment %''

Now increase expendiature and ur gdp/c will increase, if u increase it to fast u'll get inflation...and if u increase ur gdp/c to fast ur unemployment will start to drop.

So keep ur eco growing at aprox 5% per year and u should do fine (maximum growth without inflation or unemployment changes)

Unemployment stays at a fixed %...6 in this case.



So even with a STABILE (means not changing, not increasing or decreasing) gdp/c of $2.000 ur unemployment will drop to 6% after time no matter what! (also, if ur unemployment drops, ur inflation increases aswell)

And it will stay 6% aswell with a STABILE gdp/c of $50.000

If u start ur game with 30% unemployment, u'll quickly see it drop EVEN if ur gdp/c is dropping...this is because it wants to get back to the optimal 6% unemployment.

if u start ur game with 1.5% unemployment and a rapid growing economy it can still go higher because it wants to get back to the optimal 6%

Now the % ur unemployment is based on the GROWTH % of ur economy, while the standard NO GROWTH % is set at around 6%, to get lots of unemployment...u need alot of gdp/c loss, to get low unemployment %'s u need to grow alot.

The game doesn't actually check the productivity per person, rather it just sees how fast u grow.

So both countries can only grow equally fast (under equal enviroments) so u can't see country's such as china getting growth of 10% without having HUGE inflation.

Hope u understand this :S