Workforce??

[Spookyashell]

Never understood workforce in cold war either. If I increase production and/or social services unemployment go down. So far so good. But whenever I decrese production and/or social services unemployment doesn't go back up. So I'm always under 3% unemployment in 12-18 months every game, and can't really get out of it. Not even annexing Mexico as the US in 1937 helped at all, still 2.7% months after invation.

So the only way to increase unemployment is to not build anything for 5 years to get 0.1% more unemployment?
When I cut production to half in several areas, where do these workerrs go? They sure as h... doesn't end up in the unemployment line. Very annoying.

Help please.

[makotech222]

Yeah same problem here. Hope they fix it in 1936

[Aragos]

--First, you can't overbuild with USA. You can financially, but you'll quickly run out of workers.
--Second, scrap all micro and medium sized...everything. They use up workers that are better put into large factories.
--Third, watch immigration and population numbers. Ensure that you've put enough in family and health care. It will boost population. Normally, with 100% in each, you should get 5-7k population per day.

--You won't get it fixed until Japan overruns China...and then declares war on the USA. Then, invade China before you hit Japan. After that, you won't have labor problems again, plus, as you aren't "at war" with China, you won't get guerrillas/partisans. Effectively, they become USA citizens

[Spookyashell]

I started with 19.5% unemployment. All I've built in 21 months is 2 oil fields, 3 research bases, 2 rubber plants and am now down to 2.7% unemployment. Even though I've put all production down to 100-105% demand. Have put social services up on recommended though.
And I've annexed Mexico. 2.7% bloody unemployment.

Immigration 1M in, 99k out
Birth 4.2M , death 2.1M

I can clearly see it eating up manpower when I increase production or social services, problem is when I turn it down again it doesn't release the workers to the unemployment pool again.

[George Geczy]

I've made note of this and we'll check into it. Not sure if it's been reported before, but worth looking into again.

-- George / BattleGoat.

[Spookyashell]

I've made note of this and we'll check into it. Not sure if it's been reported before, but worth looking into again.

-- George / BattleGoat.

Thanks George, really appreciate it.
I reported it for Cold War, it was the same thing in there.

[PleXD]

In my games I find it is hinges off all of your social spending areas. If you have them all on recommended or higher you will have unemployment problems. I have to sacrifice some areas quite drastically but I have a stable unemployment around 4%. Of course this will hurt public opinion however.

[Spookyashell]

In my games I find it is hinges off all of your social spending areas. If you have them all on recommended or higher you will have unemployment problems. I have to sacrifice some areas quite drastically but I have a stable unemployment around 4%. Of course this will hurt public opinion however.

There is clearly a problem. Start a game. Put social services up on reccommended and wait for the changes to take effect, you will see unemployment fall like a rock. When unemployment then is very low, put social services on minimal again and notice that the unemployment does NOT go back up again. God knows what happens to the workers you just fired.

[vorius]

I tried playing a my first game of 1936 today, and quickly got discouraged. Main reason = workforce.

I started the game with ~13% unemployment. I put health, education and infrastructure social spending up to ~100% and started building an industrial goods factory.

By the time the factory was down I was already down to like 4% unemployment- WTF!

By the time I then build a consumer goods factory, unemployment 2.2%.

So I quit. The most fun in the game for me is building up a country's industry so that I can build a nice military. If I cant do that then this game is no fun.

I mean I never really liked the unemployment mechanism in this series but this latest title is just ridiculous.

Social workers eat up WAY too much manpower, it's insane. Would be nice to have a view into your employment numbers to see how many people are in your workforce and how they are divided among all the different sectors. That way we could better manage it and see if there is a bug.

And is construction supposed to take up so much material? I noticed industrial goods factory added a 548 industrial goods drain on my country, when a full industrial factory produces only about 44. Seems like they dropped the output of factories from the previous games but forgot to drop the construction cost for building them....

[George Geczy]

I've raised the priority for taking a look at the unemployment factors... there hasn't been any notable engine changes for SR1936 on these calculations, though some of the base values are different.

Regarding Industrial Goods, yes, there is a major shift in the cost/output to prevent industrial goods from "flooding" the world, and there is still some discussion about the exact balance for this, though the bottom line is that it does prevent "farming" industrial goods factories.

-- George.

[PleXD]

ok so I started a new Game as USA and put it on the fastest setting.
I locked out minister from social spending and put everything on recommended. (infrastructure spending on full)
I did not build anything except 2 rubber plantations.
As expected unemployment fell like a stone.
By the first election around Oct 1936 unemployment was at 2.6 % inflation was at 16%

After the election I set
Healthcare at recommended
education at 2/3rds recommended
infrastructure full
environment just below half recommended
family subsidy at recommended
cultural subsidy at half
Social services at about half

By December 1936 unemployment was back to 2.7%
March 1937 2.8%
May 1937 2.9%
August 1937 3.0%

Approval had dropped from 39% to 31% at this stage
inflation dropped from 16% to 12.5% at this stage.
Interesting thing is treasury raced to 10bil really fast and has stayed there ever since.

another Interesting thing is by Sep 1937 unemployment had dropped back to 2.9% but approval was back to 33% so I cut family subsidy to 2/3rds of recommended.

Oct 3.0%

By end of Dec 1937 things seem to stabilize at around 3.0% with inflation at 12.2%
So I decided to start building to see if I could change it.
I started with Air bases and storage facilities in my major industrial areas and moved to making lots of military goods.
If I build sensibly unemployment changes from 3% to 2.9% and back again a couple of times.
If I over build it drops to 2.9% and inflation creeps towards 13% but no major difference. Approval rating is now at 29%.

This is where I gave up. Take this as you will. My end population by may 1938 is 133.5mil
So yes you do get unemployment to go back up but it is slow and it is either based off inflation or social service Quality or both.

[Aragos]

+1. This happens to me every game. The only thing that changes it is the annexation of China by the US and the increase in population.

[vorius]

I ran a test tonight to gather my own data for this, and I think it really should show something is wrong.

My test case was Sandbox game, '36, Turkey, turned on option to start game with no military units.

When I started, I went to deactivate all the minister/AI functions, including each and every resource (why cant there be a central/global place to activate/deactivate AI?) the military AI, research AI, social/domestic/taxing AI.

I noted the following stats at start:
Inflation = 0.8%
Unemployment = 11%

Ok I let it go one month without doing anything at all, one month later:
Inflation = -2%
Unemployment = 12.4%

Now I adjusted social spending, but the only one I touched was infrastucture setting it to about middle of slider (Ended up being slightly above recommended) and recorded the data as months go by:

May
Inflation = -2%
Unemployment = 11.2%

June
Inflation = -1.6%
Unemployment = 10.2%

July
Inflation = -1.2%
Unemployment = 9.4%

Aug
Inflation = -1.2%
Unemployment = 9.1%

(Fast forward to March '37 - one year elapsed)
Inflation = -0.8%
Unemployment = 8.2%

Observations:
Why is unemployment going down every month? I adjusted that slider only once in the beginning. So logically I would think thats when I hired all the new workers to work on infrastructure, right? So I expect to see an immediate drop, and then it levels off since I did not build any new roads, rails or any new factory. I did nothing at all, just sat there watch the time go by! So why are more workers required each and every month to do the same job? The rate does seem to level off as time goes by, thankfully, but still - Almost 4% unemployment consumed after one year by just setting 1 social slider to recommended!

Next I wanted to try and see what if I do the same experiment, without even touching that one social slider - so essentially doing absolutely nothing for one year, and here is the data: (again, same stuff as above, same settings, same disabling of all AI I can find)

May (since Mar & April are essentially same as recorded above)
Inflation = -4.8%
Unemployment = 14.5%

June
Inflation = -7%
Unemployment = 16.6%

July
Inflation = -9%
Unemployment = 19.1%

Aug
Inflation = -11.2%
Unemployment = 22.3%

Mar '37
Inflation = -18.8%
Unemployment = 35%

This appears extremely odd. How is unemployment climbing so rapidly and steadily month by month? I'm just sitting here watching the clock. You would have expected I shut down all my factories, or an enormous influx of foreign workers poured in. I just dont get it.

Note about population:

I did record pop because I thought it may have an effect, but as I watched the data I realized pop is irrelevant so I didnt write it down. Basically, the pop climbed up for 2 months, then steadily started to drop each month there after, in both scenarios. The pop drop was slightly faster in the 2nd scenario where I didn't adjust any social sliders.

[CarljCharles]

Just some observations of my game in response to your tests...
Is it really fair to look at just these numbers in isolation?
Big thing I noticed specifically with jacking up infrastructure spending was a big gradual shift upwards in the production of all resources and manufacturing. Does this imply that there are perhaps more people able to be employed because of improvements in infrastructure boosting production?
In some ways, I really like that its not totally clear how one single change doesn't have the effect you would perhaps anticipate. I'm not saying what it does at present is correct, but perhaps there is a lot more to the economics in the game than we are giving credit for.

Very Well done BG. This is an impressive game, getting better the more you play and learn it!

[CarljCharles]

On one other quick point...
I've read quite a few posts making reference to problems with employment dropping below 3%. Its seems the complaint is generally that back turning down production % of industry doesn't appear to affect the employment rate returning people to the unemployment pool. I've only seen one post that actually suggested removing(scrapping) production facilities to actually affect employment.
I have not tested this yet but it would be good to understand the effects on employment rate in the following situations:
1- Simply reducing the production % of resources (eg. Drop from 100% of capacity to 10%)
2- Switch off power to the facilities
3- Scrap the facilities
4- Scrap Small Medium facilities and replace with Larger