I'm having a slight problem with my work force, particularly the uneducated. They just don't want to stay put in their jobs, such as farmers, garages, teamster's and lumberjacks. Their pay is more than adequate about $15/month. It also only seems to occur about 15-20 years in and persists until the end.

The odd thing is that the educated, highschool & college, don't seem to have a problem staying at their present job. I have a lot of happiness edicts active, social security, literacy, food for the people, anit-litter, pollution standards, etc.

Does this happen to anyone else, and does anyone have any advice?

Do you have a high school or college? Maybe your folks are all getting educated so they won't take lesser jobs.

Yeah I had considered that everyone was gettting an education but, there must be a way to attract them to the uneducated jobs and keep them there.

Another possibility, especially considering that it takes 15-20 years
to occur, is that the workers are retiring. That, combined with
what Timo said regarding education, your population may not be able
to fill the spots quickly enough - especially if you're expanding
with buildings requiring High School and College workers. If your HS
and College buildings are full, you could "turn off" education by
firing all your teachers - this will prevent new immigrants and adults from
being educated. Have you tried setting their wage to the rquvillent of a HS job?

As long as you have high schools and colleges, your Tropicans with higher intelligence ratings will go get an education and take the higher paying jobs. Why wouldn't they? The ones that stick in the uneducated jobs are normal those whose intelligence is below average. If you find that many of your uneducated jobs have vacancies, go to an open door immigration policy and let one ship come in. It will probably have around 15 immigrants on it for larger cities. Most of these people will be uneducated, and will immediately fill those jobs.

This is common in larger cities, because the population steadily will become more elderly and fall out of the workforce, while the children are not yet old enough to join it.

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Also keep in mind that it is better for them to leave uneducated jobs than educated ones in most cases. other than generals, I pay the engineers at my power plant more than anyone in the game to keep it fully staffed, and more importantly to retain its workers. You do not want to have rolling blackouts because your power plant workers keep changing jobs!

(11-11-2009 08:32 PM)sagacity Wrote:  Another possibility, especially considering that it takes 15-20 years
to occur, is that the workers are retiring. That, combined with
what Timo said regarding education, your population may not be able
to fill the spots quickly enough - especially if you're expanding
with buildings requiring High School and College workers. If your HS
and College buildings are full, you could "turn off" education by
firing all your teachers - this will prevent new immigrants and adults from
being educated. Have you tried setting their wage to the rquvillent of a HS job?

Also forgot to add - this can be compounded if you have an immigration
office that prevents immigration - "Tropicos Only" - I believe is what
the policy is called. Immigrants are the best source of uneducated workers
if you have educated most of your population - but they too will seek
education, if you have HS/College jobs open

Speaking of which, how many colleges and high schools do you need total for your island? I don't tend to have a lot of College kids attending. It seems like at a time at most I get 4 kids. My high school is usually pretty full. Would it be better to build more high schools? Also, how many jobs require a college degree to the point to where you don't over do making way to many of the same building?

I've tried using open doors, if I let more than one ship come in the Nationalists start groaning. Even then the uneducated jobs barely get half occupied. I might have to disable literacy and fire at least my highschool teachers and then close the job slots for it. I also tried raising their pay to near factory wages of 16-17, still didn't seem to help. Their job satisfaction is also in the mid 60 range. The last thing that baffles me is that I don't have any highschool/college level jobs for anyone...

The Nationalists will get over it. Let however many people you need in, and then close your borders. I do not recommend taking away your high school and college. You really won't need more than one each. Some tropicans will go back to school even when there is not a job open. There might have been a brief time when there was, and in that time they went back to school and it got filled. Educated tropicans will work uneducated jobs, but only if not educated jobs are available.

If you close your high school and college, you will regret it when your power plant retires some workers and there is no one there to fill the empty slots.

Have you tried Contraception Ban? It's supposed to increase birth rate. Maybe that will get you a replacement work force to make up for Tropicans who get educated.

I have never had this problem, so that's my only suggestion.

The problem I do have is that I recruit priests from overseas and they abandon the priesthood so I have to keep recruiting more. Raising priest pay doesn't seem to help.

If you have open job slots, use open immigration, keep it on until you get unemployed (check the alminac with the arrival of each ship) If they are getting educated, that means they are filling high school level jobs or above. Leaving them unfilled can be just as bad as your farmers and such.

If the nationalists start yelling too loudly, lock them up and send them to Florida, or just shoot them.

The nationalists are one of the most annoying factions in the game. Every time I hear them whine and moan about open immigration, I get this image of a bunch of backwoods rednecks yelling "they took our jobs!" when in fact, the only time I open immigration is when unemployment is at 0% and I need more workers to fill vacant jobs.

This gives me an idea for a fun thread...

I have found that once I have a foundation population, I leave the 'skilled workers only' in my immigration office. It keeps a slow steady stream of people coming into the island that will fill the open job spots. That way as people get educated or retire and move up those lower slots are kept filled. I occasionally check my unemployment and if it's between 20-30, I"ll close the borders but otherwise, that keeps everything going smoothly.

This is much like real life in many countries. The older population is living longer, and there's not enough babies to support economies.

I would suggest:
Banning contraception.
Turning medical centres to promoting child birth (I forget the word!)
Have doors open to immigration.

Of course it takes time in the game for this to really have an effect.

Shut down some non-essential buildings to force workers to more required ones (i.e. do you need so many farms).

I always restrict education. I have one, maybe two teachers. I never go over this. It throttles the amount of works going up in education and getting frustrated if they can't get high paying jobs.

(11-11-2009 06:42 PM)specvtuner Wrote:  I'm having a slight problem with my work force, particularly the uneducated. They just don't want to stay put in their jobs, such as farmers, garages, teamster's and lumberjacks. Their pay is more than adequate about $15/month. It also only seems to occur about 15-20 years in and persists until the end.

The odd thing is that the educated, highschool & college, don't seem to have a problem staying at their present job. ...

An opine from an obsolete observer:

In T1, people opt to become students only when there is a vacant job requiring education - so it is difficult to build up a reserve of educated people - if that is your game plan. That is to say T1 people do not plan ahead nor do they see intrinsic value in being educated.

T3 - by report - changes that quite distinctly. Student is a favored occupation and a vacant job requiring education is not a factor for a person's decision to go to HS/College. Meanwhile there has been no change in the individual's attitude about "menial" jobs.

My obsolete opine is that T3 has changed the T1 player's frustration with filling educated jobs to the T3 player's frustration with uneducated jobs. Now players have to flog the educated to take the menial jobs rather than flogging the intelligent to go to school.

The T3 model is much more realistic though, so works for me.

T1 frustrated me with its lack of skilled labour. I could have plenty of open jobs, but they wouldn't go for training. Then you'd lose one person in a power station, all your power buildings would be effected and chaos would ensue.

It's a lot more realistic. I look around at people I went to high school and college with, and even though we all have college degrees or at least high school ones, many are working in retail or food service, which requires neither.

You don't go to school when a job opens up, you go to school ahead of time so when a job opens up, you can apply immediately.

(12-11-2009 06:20 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  

(11-11-2009 06:42 PM)specvtuner Wrote:  I'm having a slight problem with my work force, particularly the uneducated. They just don't want to stay put in their jobs, such as farmers, garages, teamster's and lumberjacks. Their pay is more than adequate about $15/month. It also only seems to occur about 15-20 years in and persists until the end.

The odd thing is that the educated, highschool & college, don't seem to have a problem staying at their present job. ...

An opine from an obsolete observer:

In T1, people opt to become students only when there is a vacant job requiring education - so it is difficult to build up a reserve of educated people - if that is your game plan. That is to say T1 people do not plan ahead nor do they see intrinsic value in being educated.

T3 - by report - changes that quite distinctly. Student is a favored occupation and a vacant job requiring education is not a factor for a person's decision to go to HS/College. Meanwhile there has been no change in the individual's attitude about "menial" jobs.

My obsolete opine is that T3 has changed the T1 player's frustration with filling educated jobs to the T3 player's frustration with uneducated jobs. Now players have to flog the educated to take the menial jobs rather than flogging the intelligent to go to school.

And when you decide on realism, please say which part of the 20th century you lived in.
And on which Caribbean island where education was not free.

Actually I usually build my highschool right away as I don't want any of those smelly intellectuals from overseas taking my peoples jobs! And I've noticed that in most cases, I won't see students until I build a building that requires HS workers. Once I do the first one, I'll get about 3-5 extra students than I actually need and when there are no HS/College level jobs available, my HS becomes a ghost town until I plop some more industry and such down.
I think everyone here has already narrowed down what the OPs problem is though: Open borders (jail the nationalists and make them crank out license plates for you if you really care), make all your hospitals OBGYNs, and ban contraceptions. Do that for a couple of years and you will be swimming in extra Tropicans.

(12-11-2009 07:04 PM)MadMax Wrote:  Actually I usually build my highschool right away ... And I've noticed that in most cases, I won't see students until I build a building that requires HS workers. Once I do the first one, I'll get about 3-5 extra students than I actually need and when there are no HS/College level jobs available, my HS becomes a ghost town until I plop some more industry and such down. ...

Interesting observation, thank you.

So I should credit T3 with a bit more complexity than just a tip of the balance. That's good -- glad to hear it.

@ Coconut Kid

I did not know that...I always went with the idea of the pull method of education (new jobs pulling skilled workers through the education system). Your point does make sense. I have, in a recent game, experianced a 'reverse brain drain' in which all but 3 construction workers, all my garage teamsters and most of my farmers left to go to school when I built a single factory, paralyzing my economy until the next boat.

Education really works based on demand. A high school is usually one of the first buildings I build, and there usually is at least one HS educated female in the initial population so I don't need to hire a foreign expert for that. Once the school is open, all the women want to be teachers, so I usually get a full row of teachers in the school quite fast. While this happens, I build my first factory, and when it's done, the workers get educated real fast (I always enact the literacy program edict as soon as possible)

I do the same with a college. I build a college well in advance, and try to keep the skilled workers immigration policy active before that, so I just might get a college educated male come in. Usually I have to hire one, but that one can quickly teach more professors, and then when I actually need a college educated worker, the professors might decide to change jobs, or at least they are quick to educate.

You have to strike a fine balance with your immigration policy, as in some points in the game you want as many people in as possible to fill those jobs, but when you start having too many people on the island, you need to be quick in going to a skilled workers policy (or even no immigration). In my current game, I noticed at one point I had about 30 unemployed people on my island, and just then a ship came in and brought 30 more people who must went unemployed...

Immigration is really the only way I can see that can bring adequate numbers of workers to the island to support a growing economy. The kids grow up too slow (even though they start working at age 14), but they only replace the retirees most of the time.

i have some idea's i posted here, perhaps this may help?

http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread.php?tid=2879

You should limit the number of open job slots requiring high school or college, a clinic has 2 college slots, so right click 1 of the slots to close it, do this with all the buildings that doesnt demand a full staff, schools, army base, armoury and so on, and do it while it builds so it wont prompt someone to get educated.

This will ensure the people stay uneducated for as long as possible wich has 2 benefits, you are better able to fill the uneducated slots later on, and your economy wont explode when you suddenly have to pay huge wages per month, you can always open slots and educate people later when you need it