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Unemployment: What am I missing?
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CaptainPatch Offline
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Unemployment: What am I missing?
I'm thinking that my sandbox island is attracting too many social parasites. Population @400-500. Free Housing with NO Shacks appearing, and housing available near every business that needs workers. Feed the People with Marketplaces near all housing. Average pay is higher than the Caribbean average. Medical buildings near every housing concentration. Pretty much all basic needs are provided for. So why do I have @80 unfilled job openings (about half are for Uneducated), but there are anywhere from 7-20 Uneducated Unmarried Unemployed that refuse to take a job?

I'm seriously thinking of having these loafers assassinated!

"Until you know what is worth dying for, Life isn't worth living."

"Choose wisely."
12-10-2011 08:43 AM
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CoconutKid Offline
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Question RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
Have you checked their thoughts? Have they ever held any job?

I'd also check which factions they support, and which two or three of their happiness factors they rate highest.



Edit: I haven't seen this condition reported before. That's probably because no one who created such a comfortable community also paid any attention to the "unemployed."

After thinking about it a bit longer, I suspect that the prime (but not only) indicator is their individual "Job" happiness factor (one of the ten); it's probably one of their lowest. That would mean that they are quite happy enough without a job.

How to correct them so they become willing workers? I don't know, but there are probably better solutions than offing them because that has concurrent bad effects on useful workers.

Possibilities: Repeated evictions from their houses - e.g. simple harassment -- micro-management worth it if they have skills worth using. Arrest, if you can set it up so they go to a prison set to convict labor (option to make money rather than reform) -- cheaper than killing them. There may be other possibilities depending on identifying a common trend amongst them.

Wink
(This post was last modified: 12-10-2011 05:20 PM by CoconutKid.)
12-10-2011 02:48 PM
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CaptainPatch Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(12-10-2011 02:48 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  Have you checked their thoughts? Have they ever held any job?

I'd also check which factions they support, and which two or three of their happiness factors they rate highest.

I haven't seen this condition reported before. That's probably because no one who created such a comfortable community also paid any attention to the "unemployed."

After thinking about it a bit longer, I suspect that the prime (but not only) indicator is their individual "Job" happiness factor (one of the ten); it's probably one of their lowest. That would mean that they are quite happy enough without a job.

I haven't checked them for their individual thoughts as of yet. As for the factions, the lowest faction happiness = 60 (Religious -- because they're NEVER fully satisfied unless you have about one church -- with FOUR Priests! -- for every 10 citizens). Most of the others are at 100.

My theory is that upon arrival at Tropico, they plop into a housing; just how they determine which one, I don't know. THEN they look to see if there are jobs to filled _near by_. If they happened to drop into a housing that has NO open jobs near by, they just sit on their lazy behinds and collect Social Security, rather than move to where there IS a job opening. So your eviction strategy may very well nudge them over to where they are needed.

My biggest concern about the Unemployed is that if they stay Unemployed, they WILL eventually become Criminals. I'd rather not make Prison maintenance into a growth industry.

"Until you know what is worth dying for, Life isn't worth living."

"Choose wisely."
12-10-2011 06:29 PM
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LeaT Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
Have you checked how many students you have? I have noticed that Tropico 4 classify students as employed when they are in reality not employed in the sense of the word. Also, have you tried with Love It Or Leave It strategy at the migration office? If you absolutely feel you need to employ your cititizens, you can produce factories as they are both very lucrative and use a high amount of work force. Gold factories are the best for the simple reason that gold factories with full upgrades produce the most expensive good after oil products but take up far less space than an oil raffinery. Also, have you ensured that your island got enough garages? You need a garage near each housing block and near the work place.
12-10-2011 11:12 PM
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CaptainPatch Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(12-10-2011 11:12 PM)LeaT Wrote:  1) Have you checked how many students you have? I have noticed that Tropico 4 classify students as employed when they are in reality not employed in the sense of the word.
2) Also, have you tried with Love It Or Leave It strategy at the migration office?
3) If you absolutely feel you need to employ your cititizens, you can produce factories as they are both very lucrative and use a high amount of work force. Gold factories are the best for the simple reason that gold factories with full upgrades produce the most expensive good after oil products but take up far less space than an oil raffinery.
4)Also, have you ensured that your island got enough garages? You need a garage near each housing block and near the work place.

1) The Economy Unemployed stat tells me I have X number of Unemployed. Checking Lists, Jobs, Unemployed, I have X number of Male or Female Tropicans. Students (Grade School/Children, High School, and College)have their own sections of the Jobs list. So I'm not getting a "false positive" that equates Students to Unemployed or vice versa.

2) The trouble, EVERYBODY loves it in Tropico. Apparently these deadbeats love it in Tropico! So that isn't going to get them to leave on their own. Besides, even with 7-20 Unemployed, I still have 80-100 jobs that still need to be filled.

3) Factories require workers to have at least a High School education. ALL of my Unemployed are Uneducated.

4) My SOP places a Garage near anyplace that has one or more Tenements. (Pretty much the ONLY Housing I build. Turn on the electricity and the quality goes up to 50, which is decent.) I also place a Garage within a short distance of any business (including Farms and Ranches). I try to cut down commute time as much as possible.

"Until you know what is worth dying for, Life isn't worth living."

"Choose wisely."
13-10-2011 12:54 AM
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Lord Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(13-10-2011 12:54 AM)CaptainPatch Wrote:  
(12-10-2011 11:12 PM)LeaT Wrote:  1) Have you checked how many students you have? I have noticed that Tropico 4 classify students as employed when they are in reality not employed in the sense of the word.
2) Also, have you tried with Love It Or Leave It strategy at the migration office?
3) If you absolutely feel you need to employ your cititizens, you can produce factories as they are both very lucrative and use a high amount of work force. Gold factories are the best for the simple reason that gold factories with full upgrades produce the most expensive good after oil products but take up far less space than an oil raffinery.
4)Also, have you ensured that your island got enough garages? You need a garage near each housing block and near the work place.

1) The Economy Unemployed stat tells me I have X number of Unemployed. Checking Lists, Jobs, Unemployed, I have X number of Male or Female Tropicans. Students (Grade School/Children, High School, and College)have their own sections of the Jobs list. So I'm not getting a "false positive" that equates Students to Unemployed or vice versa.

2) The trouble, EVERYBODY loves it in Tropico. Apparently these deadbeats love it in Tropico! So that isn't going to get them to leave on their own. Besides, even with 7-20 Unemployed, I still have 80-100 jobs that still need to be filled.

3) Factories require workers to have at least a High School education. ALL of my Unemployed are Uneducated.

4) My SOP places a Garage near anyplace that has one or more Tenements. (Pretty much the ONLY Housing I build. Turn on the electricity and the quality goes up to 50, which is decent.) I also place a Garage within a short distance of any business (including Farms and Ranches). I try to cut down commute time as much as possible.

Try setting obsterics as your work mode in your clinics and remove the Social Security edict. That way only those who actually can afford it will go to colleges and high schools, and the population will keep growing with much more unemployed people, at the expense of having many graduates.

SOPA threatens the Internet with Censorship. Good work, America. Land of the free, government of idiots.
13-10-2011 02:48 AM
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ezwip Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
You might try charging them for a place to live. That should solve the problem.
13-10-2011 07:07 AM
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CoconutKid Offline
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Question RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(12-10-2011 06:29 PM)CaptainPatch Wrote:  ... As for the factions, the lowest faction happiness = 60 (Religious -- because they're NEVER fully satisfied unless you have about one church -- with FOUR Priests! -- for every 10 citizens). Most of the others are at 100. ...

When I asked about factions, I did not mean the factions themselves -- I guess I used poor word order in my sentence.

The unemployed individuals each have ten happiness factors. Each individual ranks each of these factors, thereby showing what is really important to them. Not every individual places his\her "Job" happiness factor at the top of the list. So - your unemployed individuals may have their "Job" happiness factors at the bottom of their lists, i.e. they care very little if they don't have a job, or a "good" job.

The unemployed individuals each support one or more factions (probably). Sometimes their support of a faction is so strong that they wish to take only jobs associated with that faction. (My question was not intended to have anything to do with "faction happiness.")

I hope I have made the reasons for my questions clearer.

EDIT: Rereading this post some time later, I see that I implied that the individual lists of happiness factors were in different order - most important to least important. I do not know that the be the case in T4. Other means such has high-lighting or assigning numbers may be used.

The point is that the ten factors have different weights per individual. Therefore, some individuals are relatively unconcerned by their job or lack thereof. If they have an income to pay for entertainment and/or improved housing, they will have zero motivation to go to work.

Wink
(This post was last modified: 20-05-2012 04:07 PM by CoconutKid.)
13-10-2011 02:06 PM
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CaptainPatch Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(13-10-2011 02:06 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  I hope I have made the reasons for my questions clearer.

Yes, you have.

I didn't know that the factors were in order of importance to _that_ citizen. I did look at a couple of Unemployed citizens. Most of their "satisfaction meters" were all 50% or greater. The common exception being Religion (@45%). [I had a laugh when I noted your observation about factor ranking because the last citizen I checked had Respect as his _last_ factor, and it was the strongest Satisfied at about 90-95%. "I really, really like you, but that's NOT important... at all!"]

"Until you know what is worth dying for, Life isn't worth living."

"Choose wisely."
13-10-2011 06:50 PM
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rj66 Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
I have a hunch that a lot of your unemployed are young enough that they want to attend the highschool for the high school positions but the highschool quene is full whenever they have the opertunity to change into student status.
solution may be to block off most of the open high school job positions so the desire to be a student is reduced. They then might settle for a uneducated job position temporarily.

How are your teachers doing in such a high demand situation.

Anyway the problem with unemployed is they walk everywhere(meal pickup, church, clinic and home) so its a long wait between opertunities to become student or take a lesser job. If they dont get a job immediately after immigranting then they might get stuck in that special case situation of wanting a better job then their presently qualified for.
(This post was last modified: 13-10-2011 07:25 PM by rj66.)
13-10-2011 07:14 PM
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CaptainPatch Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
That's one of the odd things about Education in Tropico: I can't seem to keep the Teachers as Teachers. I recruit High School Educated teachers from abroad, they start teaching for awhile, but then when I check back a month or two later, and NO teachers! I'm guessing that hey're either changing careers -- which would be VERY odd as I pay all HS-educated workers the same wage -- or else they quit to become Mothers.

Sidenote: A 2-to-1 ratio between Students and High School Teachers is ridiculous. The same goes for the 2-to-1 ratio between College Students and Professors. The grade School has a MUCH better ratio, except that instead of two teachers there should be at least four. At a low ratio you do NOT have teachers; you have tutors. (And highly-paid tutors at that!)

"Until you know what is worth dying for, Life isn't worth living."

"Choose wisely."
14-10-2011 01:35 AM
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Swixel Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(14-10-2011 01:35 AM)CaptainPatch Wrote:  A 2-to-1 ratio between Students and High School Teachers is ridiculous. The same goes for the 2-to-1 ratio between College Students and Professors. The grade School has a MUCH better ratio, except that instead of two teachers there should be at least four. At a low ratio you do NOT have teachers; you have tutors. (And highly-paid tutors at that!)

If we're not suspending disbelief here ...

At university most academic staff/professors have their own research, and a 2-to-1 supposes other work is being done. Now, if we had them doing something else it'd be neat, but what's to assume they're not?

As for grade schools being a lower ratio, younger kids actually require less attention; praise goes a long way.

"I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know" ― Cicero.

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14-10-2011 01:52 AM
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IronFist Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
Jack up the costs of housing and services to put those freeloaders to work.

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14-10-2011 06:56 PM
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whybuybeta Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(14-10-2011 01:35 AM)CaptainPatch Wrote:  That's one of the odd things about Education in Tropico: I can't seem to keep the Teachers as Teachers. I recruit High School Educated teachers from abroad, they start teaching for awhile, but then when I check back a month or two later, and NO teachers! I'm guessing that hey're either changing careers -- which would be VERY odd as I pay all HS-educated workers the same wage -- or else they quit to become Mothers.

Sidenote: A 2-to-1 ratio between Students and High School Teachers is ridiculous. The same goes for the 2-to-1 ratio between College Students and Professors. The grade School has a MUCH better ratio, except that instead of two teachers there should be at least four. At a low ratio you do NOT have teachers; you have tutors. (And highly-paid tutors at that!)

this is a flawed remnant of the original ai, when we had no transportation. what happens is they also take distance of residence, job quality, unfilled positions, etc into account when choosing their jobs, that gets constantly reevaluated during the game. so when your island starts to get populated you will notice this sort of worker musical chairs happening, as certain areas become crowded and you build more housing and create more jobs. the absurd teacher/student ratio I think is just a matter of balance, also from when the game was built for much smaller and less populated islands.

check their experience history sometime and you will see some people take 4-5 different jobs all within the same education class. this also has a terrible effect on productivity, when experienced workers just decide to switch jobs for no apparent reason and all those positions get filled by noobs. they really should've retuned the ai when they decided to add roads and cars imo, this does not work properly when distance is much less of a factor.

only way I found to prevent this (along with the other method of mass eviction) is to have some sort of wage hierarchy for the most important jobs within the same class, since job quality is one of the top factors the ai uses when each citizen changes/keeps their job. eg. construction workers, teamsters, dock workers, all get paid one or two dollars extra. same goes for teachers, bureaucrats, soldiers, professors, etc. that way they're more likely to keep those positions filled with experienced workers, and the bulk of your workforce that shifts around alot are more likely to end up in a job that continues to build the same experience, eg. farmers and factory workers.
16-10-2011 05:31 AM
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laccy Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
unemployeds are mostly low intelligence, single immigrants or kids

or fired specialists (teachers wont choose lower class jobs )
love it or leave it cleans up the island from stupid people, especially with weather station

but actually unemployeds want to get job near their house

i had also problems when i made a house park with lot of apartments and lucha libre., too much housing is the problem, put housing near jobs

i will try now to have much more teamster and construction buildings set to easy it does
this makes unemployeds to choose that
16-01-2012 05:52 PM
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jiso Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
I think CoconutKid is on to something. I recently noticed a significant percentage of my unemployed being some combination of Communist and/or Militarist at a time when healthcare and housing was poor, and there was neither an army base or an armory...
14-05-2012 03:49 AM
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BHunterSEAL Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
When was there ever a point that we had no transportation? I doubt very much that the original AI logic was carried from Tropico 1 (pre-Haemimont) to Tropico 3, and by extension ported to the new engine in T4. I rarely if ever build housing near my industrial, agricultural, resource-extraction, or tourism centers, which are generally kept far away from the island's residential neighborhoods. As long as I'm good about garage/metro placement and people can meet their food, entertainment, medical, and religion needs close to home, it's pretty rare that I see shacks around work sites or workers refusing to take jobs. If I ever have a problem, it's usually not having enough dockworkers to staff the the three or four ports that I've accumulated by mid-game, but this is easily solved by re-enabling immigration (I keep it on Tropico First unless I have a shortage of labor) or paying for foreign uneducated workers.

I've never tried the Free Housing edict so it's possible that I've missed these problems because I'm a stingy bastard--my lowest quality housing rent is set to 1/3 the uneducated worker pay rate at all times (generally my wage scale is sufficient to guarantee that folks on Social Security can also afford housing). So to have shelter, you have to be employed, on SS, or married to someone that is. Try what ezwip suggested and start charging rent, my guess is the AI will kick in and motivate your layabouts to find work--especially if they are, as laccy said, generally single.
(This post was last modified: 14-05-2012 06:31 AM by BHunterSEAL.)
14-05-2012 06:30 AM
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ambrennan Offline
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RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
Have you checked the gender of the unemployed, and of the vacant positions? Women can't work at docks, garages and such. The AI is somewhat smart about it - e.g. most farmers tend to be female in late game - but that only gets you so far.

In theory, you might be able to get high-school educated males to work those jobs and put the unemployed women through high-school to fill the industry vacancies but I'm not sure how you'd actually get them to do that.

Btw, I think that this why the business centre was introduced in MT; it's unlocked at the point where the gender imbalance becomes crippling much like the Metro station that is unlocked when commuting traffic becomes crippling.
I tend to have about 10 of them in late game to soak up uneducted labour - all of them women. Quick to build and hugely profitable if you have compact housing (5x5 modern apartment blocks with a metro station in the middle)
(This post was last modified: 20-05-2012 12:07 PM by ambrennan.)
20-05-2012 12:02 PM
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CoconutKid Offline
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Shy RE: Unemployment: What am I missing?
(13-10-2011 06:50 PM)CaptainPatch Wrote:  I didn't know that the factors were in order of importance to that citizen. I did look at a couple of Unemployed citizens. Most of their "satisfaction meters" were all 50% or greater. The common exception being Religion (@45%).

I'm sorry to find so much later that I still did not make myself clear. The amount in the meter is immaterial. It is the weighted importance of each of the ten factors which is important.

(13-10-2011 06:50 PM)CaptainPatch Wrote:  I had a laugh when I noted your observation about factor ranking because the last citizen I checked had Respect as his _last_ factor, and it was the strongest Satisfied at about 90-95%. "I really, really like you, but that's NOT important at all!"

Yep! I really didn't make it at all clear. Captain P took the list to be the ranking. Although he is not specific, it certainly sounds like he didn't notice whether or not the order was the same for all of the individuals he looked at. In T1, they appear in the same order with the name lighter or heaver to show importance; Respect is always number 10.

(14-05-2012 03:49 AM)jiso Wrote:  I think CoconutKid is on to something. ...

That's hardly likely.

I was trying to search out or confirm what Captain Patch had seemed to have discovered.

Quote:I'm thinking that my sandbox island is attracting too many social parasites. ... there are anywhere from 7-20 Uneducated Unmarried [wearing the] Unemployed [icon] that refuse to take a job?

It seems to me that having the Social Security edict in effect (at the time of his post) did cause some of the people to lay back and ride the government gravy train. This had not been so clearly identified before - so far as I had noticed.

The Social Security edit was added to T1 by the Paradise Island expansion. It followed the American naming custom - including payments to Retirees (Social Security a limited progam focused on the elderly) and Students (Scholarships a very narrow program), but nothing for the Unemployed who are covered by a specific tax. The Haemimont developers revised the edict to make it conform to the European naming custom - Social Security as a broad program covering all aspects of social welfare, with payments to Retirees, Students and the Unemployed. There are several other threads discussing the differences in the programs between Europe and the US; perhaps mostly on the T3 board.

I don't know what the current status of the Social Security edict is. I think the payments to the Unemployed may have been dropped. With thousands of citizens, very few players pay any attendtion to such minor details; or if they do, they don't comment on them.

Wink
(This post was last modified: 20-05-2012 04:56 PM by CoconutKid.)
20-05-2012 04:24 PM
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