Different ways to lower employment?

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hanzie
Warrant Officer
Posts: 26
Joined: Jul 31 2006

Different ways to lower employment?

Post by hanzie »

I thought I had such a great economy going, for a newbie.
Exporting loads of goods to all corners of the world, making BIG bucks.

But "sadly", everyone living in my country got a job.
Where are the bums when you need them?

I went from selling agri and ore on a ~250% markup, to not being able to compete with the prices. (Still producing shitloads, though)

Im selling of some of my huge stocks (at a loss) to be able to pay for industry efficiency upgrades, but thats not working very well.

So last night, I found out that I could set my production to level with my demand. Some industries got cut alot, like 50%, so I expected alot of people getting fired.

But my unemployments only went from 2.1% up to 2.4%. And that took several months, if not a year. Kind of makes me wonder if thats not immigration and births.


So besides from upgrading efficiency and cutting production to level with demand, what other ways are there to increase my beloved welfare-leeches?

I want a Commerce-Priority called "Fight Employment!" :)
hanzie
Warrant Officer
Posts: 26
Joined: Jul 31 2006

Post by hanzie »

Is it possible that the other countries simply "outruns" me in the unemployment-race?

I dont remember what the prices USED to be, only that I could add alot of percentage.
So could the unemployment all around me have been skyrocketing so much that the prices fall faster than I can fire people?

I mean, I wanna compete on the market, but I can only go so far before crashing down further than I can climb, right?

*cries* Im a construction worker! Someone teach me economy, please!
BigStone
General
Posts: 1390
Joined: Dec 22 2004
Location: Holland

Post by BigStone »

Well there are alot of things you can do or try:

First ... go to war.... :wink:

But if that is not a option try this:
decrease domestic demand (no export/ecogrowth)
cut your military expense (shut down bases/sell units)
increase tax
control immi- emigration (high DAR social spendings etc will attrack peeps)
scrap plants when you have overproduction
improve your infrastructure
forbit the use of contraception

and a little trick i use sometimes :
Deactivate all , and i mean ALL , your plants for a short period of time
(maybe a couple of days or weeks) and when you have a unemployments around
the 4% activate them again.You'll see that the new ue figure will be stable for
a long period
NO MORE NOISY FISH [unless they are green & furiously]
I HAVE STILL A FISH IN MY EAR
Il Duce
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 577
Joined: Aug 10 2005
Location: Venice - the Doge's palace on the Pacific.

Post by Il Duce »

Seconding BigStone's suggestion, and adding a bit. A FALLING GDP is not necessarily a bad thing - it's a recession. I have written about this in the the econ forum a bit. Some of my observations are pretty rough, but they are a place to start. see

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7467

...And sometimes you just have to force a bunch of population away and rebuild. BTW - some regions are VERY sensitive to sales tax items. That is, you may raise prices and they'll keep buying, but you raise the sales tax instead and they get pissy. We're talking alt-ticks on the scale here. I have found this particular tax to be very useful in certain regions. In others it isn't as meaningful. There are also several other articles here and on the wiki that may be of interest - though not necessrily easy to find.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [but otherwise, they do not worry and are happy].
Il Duce
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 577
Joined: Aug 10 2005
Location: Venice - the Doge's palace on the Pacific.

Post by Il Duce »

hanzie---

as you may have discovered, efficiency dollars are a crap shoot. Two interesting situations to consider when using efficiency...

1) you are trying to lower inflation by lowering prices on a commodity that you have a high efficiency investment on: you discover that below a certain price you are selling at a loss.

2) you are producing surpluses for export on a commodity that you have a high efficiency investment on. The more you produce, the more you are investing, since efficiency is dynamically calculated relative to volume. Unless you have a really good margin, it costs you more to produce a surplus than you can make by exporting.

In both cases the efficiency investment is NOT seen as part of the price or the unit cost, but only as part of the collective expenses in the treasury summary (or as a line item of 'production costs' in the treasury outflows screen). The number on the end of the efficiency slider is not always a good indicator, as it is recalculated every turn. It can be especially misleading on a 'spiky' producer, such as mil-goods set to produce to demand. When demand spikes, eff spikes, only to return to a lower value on the next non-spike turn.

The real problem then is how to remove efficiency investment, as of course removing this raises the effective consumer markup (and the pass through wholesale price). If it is one of the complex commodities - typically petro or power, that is incorporated into other products, this price rise will occur on every downstream product - and it will have resonance as demands adjust over time. Ticking DOWN petro investment raises not only the petro cost of production and consumer price, but also raises that cost and price of any petro power you are producing, as well as all c-, i-, and m-goods.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [but otherwise, they do not worry and are happy].
hanzie
Warrant Officer
Posts: 26
Joined: Jul 31 2006

Post by hanzie »

Thanks for the help, both of you.

Perhaps I should load the savegame further back, and try those tips.

...since I went with the war-option. heh
I CTRL-H:ed and looked for the highest unemployment amongst my neighbors and BANG!

That is a surreal reason to go to war. - I love it.
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