High Level Workers as Cause of large Unemployment

Hey Andy, in the game docs it says:
'The number of high-level workers is changing with the demand in the corporations. When more are needed, medium level workers are promoted automatically and become high-level workers. There is no need to worry about reasonable shortages of high level workers when building a new corporation. A shortage of several thousands high-level workers can be ignored. It will be automatically corrected in time.'
So as I understand if there are high Level workers needed and there are medium Level workers that aren't employed those medium Level workers should be promoted to high Level workers, is that correct?
I ask as the one and only Thing that hinders employment rates in my Country Unimatrix 01 on KB is that there aren't enough high Level workers even though there are a few hunderd thousand medium Level workers unemployed. And as soon as I demote any other workforce to high Level workers employment rates increase, while if i dont manually Transfer them the employment rate goes down, and that's only because of the high Level workers as any other Group has more People unemployed then the Minimum in their Group. I allready increased the edu index to see if that helps and at least to a edu index of 245 it doesnt help with this Problem.
Any suggestions but the manual transfer?

As you probably can see, there is indeed a monthly conversion of low and medium workers to the high level workers group.
up to 40.000 become available each game month.
this is up from 30.000 recently.

we have seen this problem. The question is:
does the industry require too many?
Is the upgrading process of corporations requires too many?
or is availability too limited as part of the working population.

We will do some computations and will try to solve it in one of these three ways.

If you look at my country you can see the total number of hlws decline even as there is a big shortage in only this working class. The medium workers also decline, but they aren't the limiting factor as when I convert other professions to hlw the number of mlws increase automatically. the only working class that increases on its own is llws. I also experienced this when I had all Corps in my Country fully developed. If you have a fixed number of 40k that become availabe each month that seems to be the problem: In larger Countries I think there might be more hlws retire/die per month then those 40k, that may also be the reason that while I don't manually convert professionals to hlws there are allways exactly 40k hlws unemployed. Maybe this number could be linked to edu-index and/or the total number of workers.

And while we are talking about it: the conversion of 100k professionals per month is too low for countries with larger population if one has to fight those hlw shortages.

Andy, any news about this matter?

We think that the problem will subside in the coming days and weeks.
In the mean time, the conversion amounts to 240.000 high level workers each day.

If you set up new corporations, despite the shortage of HLWs, there will be an immediate problem but it will quickly disappear by the continuing 40.000 conversion each game month.

So Andy, after a Little Econ-Experimentation here are my conclusions for HLWs in Countries with big populations: The Conversion Rate on which the System converts Workers to HLWs has to be linked to the total number of Workers to work properly. I've been through times with stagnating Corp-Numbers, increasing Corp-Numbers and lowering Corp-Numbers and the only bottle-neck for Employment is allways the HLWs. If I dont convert them manually the Overall employment drops constantly in Unitmatrix 001 on KB in each Scenario. If I convert manually the employment rises in each Scenario.
So in my opinion the best way to solve this would be to factor in the Overall worker numbers.

BQ - I am faced with the same issue with HLW. See Republic of Carolina on KB. I have to constantly make the manual conversion to HLW or I would exhaust my supply of HLW in short order. Andy, please take a look at what BQ has come up with. I think she is right on target with a solution.

I wish to second and third BQ's and Jack statements. The HLW always were and still are the big bottle neck for growing which is not right.

You are probably right about the conversion rate, depending on the size of the population and we might make this change.

However, we think that if there is a structural problem with HLWs, it should be resolved and the need to convert should be reduced.

We have already tuned the system and we think that the situation will be improved.

The tuning is needed freom time to time as we add new products and we have slowly increased the size of corporations to prevent their numbers from increasing too much.

Such changed can cause shifts in numbers and require some tuning to correct them.

There will be another correction. (Tuesday Jan 27).

The system was tuned two more times in the past weeks.
we think that the situation is much improved.

Please let us know, with the name of country and world, if you have any remaining problems with HLWs.

Candinnalm. World LU. Still need to exchange with my empire or convert professionals to keep the number of high level workers I need. I suspect any large country, 250+ million pop, still experiences this.

Sorry for the late reply but had some unexpected downtime.

Unimatrix 001 on KB still has the HLW 40k problem as far as I can see. As soon as I started manually converting others to HLWs the employment goes up, if not it goes down, so it seems the HLW is still the problem

I'll ask an engineer to have another look. I'll post again when I have an answer

High level workers are definitely THE bottle neck. I can fix countries so I have enough high tech people, but never enough high level workers. Annoying, actually.

Over a mil in HTE...always massive shortage of HLW.

Any updates on this? My high population countries are still a constant management mess. Best example is Candinnalm on LU.

The HLW shortages are an ongoing problem. You said in November 2014 you had some options to correct this. Please update us on this and take the necessary action to correct it as soon as possible. Thanks

just the other day, i was looking at my country, remembering this very thing, hoping some one would bring this back up, remembering what i wrote on other threads, pointing out that this isn't really a game cog problem, but a player management problem.

my argument was dismissed on the grounds that my country wasn't large enough to experience the problem. so now at 214M, i have over 95% employment, and getting better, and i Never demote professionals to HLW. Nor do i make worker exchanges between countries, i don't have to.

the problem is a combination of over education, and lack of a realistic corp building range.

Check out "Dream Land"

it takes a couple days for the HLW to naturally grow to the point i can build new corp, plus, 90% of the time, if the required number of HLW would drop my unplyed number below 40K, i don't build. so depending on what i want to build, i'll wait until i have 70K ish avaible. plus, you have to build a strong mining/agg/food industry, to stabilize your LLW/MLW, this will create ladder promotion effect. with more LLW and MLW employed, this improves their promotion into HLW.

which means that the best corps to stabilize your work force, are corporations that are largely ignored by high end players.

I'll tell you, Jozi created a game with more depth, than he gets credit for. its not realistic that a 200M plus country wouldn't have a significant agriculture industry. but instead, players build only the corps they think are most profitable, creating an unbalanced work force, then complain to the GM that the game is broken.

if you drop your HLW below the 40K threshold to much, using the 40K promotion feature, eventually you'll need that 40K to maintain your work force. and with over education, and aggressive HI, eventually, that won't be able to maintain your work force. and you'll need to use the 100K demotion feature, and worker exchanges, which eventually you'll have to do, to maintain your work force. with the slippery slope effect, of always needing to work harder to maintain an unrealistic work force. if you rely on the natural promotion of HLW, it takes a little longer, but it will manage itself, and simcountry is a long term game...

I appreciate your suggestions Orbiter but please check Candinnalm in relation to your points.

1. "my country wasn't large enough to experience the problem"

This could be right. My countries with 250m+ seem to get this but my 110-150M pop countries don't. Candinnalm has over 285 million population.

2. "the problem is a combination of over education"

Candinnalm has an education index of less than 120.

3. "lack of a realistic corp building range"

Candinnalm is fairly diverse with a large industrial base of about $540B production/month, balanced with tech, about $650B, and over a dozen other corps in other categories.

4. "it takes a couple days for the HLW to naturally grow to the point i can build new corp"

I haven't built a new corp in Candinnalm in 2015.

5. "its not realistic that a 200M plus country wouldn't have a significant agriculture industry. "

The United States has a population of over 320 million and agriculture consists of less than 1% of its $17.6 Trillion yearly GDP. Simcountry includes the "food" category for what the real world would include in economic "agriculture". Candinnalm has a population of 286 million and agriculture/food contributes $166 Billion to yearly GDP or 1.1% of its $15 Trillion yearly GDP.


6. "if you rely on the natural promotion of HLW, it takes a little longer, but it will manage itself"

Not for me.

If I am missing something, I am all ears. I am not building and I think my corporation choice mirrors general planet consumption needs.

i don't really care aries, keep doing what your doing, i'll keep doing what i'm doing, i'm not having the problem your having.

California, which by itself, is one of the biggest economies in the world, has lumber, potatoes, hay, alfalfa, cattle, all kinds of fruits, nuts, vegitables, the list of natural resources go on and on. in fact, Cali wouldn't be what it is today, with out Gold. people migrated to the west for farm land, and natural resources, which are still an vital part of the economy. it was built up from that, to include shows, vacations, sports, various industries, software, computers, and various tech, utilities. it started with agg/mining, and grew from their

so my point is, you build corps that are heavy on llw/mlw, until you build a base, that easily supplies your HLW. it works. and it is a realistic way to build an economy.

where ever you go in the world, your going to find natural resources, and farming as always being what a community was founded on. then grew out of that. the point i'm making, is you have to build mining/agg/food corps until natural promotion process can support a more sophisticated economy

take a look at my business and trade in dream land, you'll see a very different range of income. take a look at my employment page, and review my education priorities, add them up, my education, which is a chunk lower than yours, has to work less hard, to maintain an equal FI rank.

which is something else to point out, my country with 72M less pop is pretty much ranked neck and neck with yours, your war/fi ranks, of 52/3, and mine 58/2 means that they are doing about the same thing, but mine is doing it with less effort, at 75% percent the pop.

so like i said, keep doing what your doing, its not working.

when i say not working, your country is obviously rich, and powerful, i mean in the since of your worker pop working right, with my point that you can be just as successful, with less effort, by doing things differently

Here is some further data. This is the breakdown of Food and Agriculture corps on LU.

"Agriculture"

Beans 47
Cattle Feed 468
Cocoa 8
Corn 134
Cotton 50
Peanuts 52
Soybeans 230
Wheat 96
Wool 442

"Food"

Bread 145
Butter 37
Cattle 256
Cheese 112
Eggs 82
Fish 89
Fruit 482
Fruit Juice 54
Meat 476
Meat Products 276
Milk 270
Milk Products 203
Other Food Products 722
Potatoes 92
Poultry 193
Rice 96
Spices 116
Sugar 46
Tea 32
Vegetables 410
Wine 55

Total Corps on LU (From world data) 76477

Total "Agriculture" 1527 2%

Total "Food" 4244 5.5%


In short, there is not enough demand in these products for players to balance workers here. I control over 3000 corps on LU, most in my own empire. How many could possibly be in these categories and meet consistent demand?

"i don't really care aries, keep doing what your doing, i'll keep doing what i'm doing, i'm not having the problem your having."

This is what you are doing:

Dreamland

Total Corps 319
Total "Food" 36 (11.3% of total)
Total "Agriculture" 26 (8.2% of total)

If you don't really care and don't wish to defend your points, why post? I believe you are not having the problem with some combination of not being big enough and possible with your corp mix that it would not be possible to replicate for all players as world demand, in Simcountry, is limited for agriculture and food corps. The world requires about 7.5% of its corps (I could make a longer argument that it actually needs less as many of these areas are in world surplus)in these categories but Dreamland's mix is nearly 20%.

"which is something else to point out, my country with 72M less pop is pretty much ranked neck and neck with yours, your war/fi ranks, of 52/3, and mine 58/2 means that they are doing about the same thing, but mine is doing it with less effort, at 75% percent the pop."

Not sure where you are going with this. The war ranking has to do with how many weapons are in the country. I have a few more than you right now. Mine fluctuates with what I happen to be upgrading as I believe yours does as well.

As far as financial rankings, this is based on financial index which looks at financials and compared to pop size.

Candinnalm

286 million population
$15 Trillion yearly GDP
$52450 per capita
$6.6 Trillion yearly govt income
$2.9 Trillion yearly govt costs
$3.7 Trillion net income

Dreamland

214 million population
$9.85 Trillion yearly GDP
$46000 per capita
$3.7 Trillion yearly govt income
$1.4 Trillion yearly govt costs
$2.3 Trillion net income

The way finance index works is that my country is similar to yours, only bigger. Not that you achieve similar results with a smaller size.

what i mean by not caring, is not wanting to agrue, but some how i find myself doing it

food and agg are commonly in the red. as well as most mining. their certainly is more room for more of those corps. so more than just myself can do this.

but as far as over producing, i've been noticing my total LLW workers dropping, so i've considered how much this has to do with my low HI, and how much is from my country being heavy in the m/a/f markets. its highly probable that its both, that is that i have to many being promoted, and i may need to close some m/a/f stuff as my work force matures. which would fall in line with my basic concept, the US economy didn't start out making computers and software, that came after a stable natural resources and agriculture based system allowed room for research and growth.

with a side point, that if i increase my HI to 100, it'll probably boost my production, but i have it low on purpose, for an unrelated reason

which is why i'd rather not go back and forth, every thing in SC has benefits and draw backs, if you do something one way, you'll have a problem, if you make an adjustment to fix it, you'll end with another, this is not a game mechanism problem this is how life works. you fix something, to end up with a new problem, and so on, and so forth. which means, that you will always find a hole in my argument, rather than giving it a try yourself.

the solution to your problem is a different set of corporation building, and education priorities, that will of course have other problems.

You post as if this only occurs in my country.

Borg Queen has this problem.

Christos has this problem.

Jack has this problem

Letsie has this problem.

Blackeyes has this problem.

EO has this problem.

Smokes has this problem.

Jackseptic has this problem.

Many of the effected countries have nearly 300 million population. Are we all doing it wrong? Using your country of 214 million as an example that there is nothing wrong is a stretch to put it mildly.