High unemployment and tons of open jobs, so why are my high schools empty?

[Raistlen]

I'm in the modern era and I currently have a ton of open jobs requiring a high school degree. I also have a ton of unemployment, but all of my high schools are half empty. Is there something I could do to get more of my unemployed tropicans to get to class?

[Lцсᶖаᶇ º¹]

Tropicans are lazy. I don't know how to fix it. Sorry.

[Rostan]

This is actually IMO a bit of realism over Tropico 4. There always are both unemployment and open positions in any society. Simply put, some Tropicans have enough wealth to live in decent conditions and will NOT be tempted to seek jobs. The empty spots are usually the bottom of the job chain, e.g. mid-funded farms or Textile Mills in the Modern Era...

[꧁Fallen The Pandemic꧂]

U can fix this by only letting inteligent people in Tropico

[Sedition]

Highschool jobs require a bit of micromanagement compared to others, there always seems to be a shortage of workers, so I always take care when building anything that needs highschool educated citizens.

I never build textile mills (these require way too many workers), not sure about the cannery, but I never build it either. Hydroponic farms never exist in my society either, or upgraded ranches.

The most important jobs for them are: police stations, rum factories, supermarkets*, highschools and finally newspapers with the upgrade. They also work the oil wells if you need those, but I've never found them useful. So my advice would be to shut down pretty much anything other than those.

*They tend to abandon supermarkets first since the job quality is lower than most other HS jobs, which can lead to starvation despite excess food. Placing them near a food source and parking lot + max wage should give at least an 87 job quality though.

[The World is a Sandbox]

You can pay for High School educated workers to come to your island, you can set your immigration policy accordingly, you can decree a "Work for All" society that will give you lots of workers, and you can increase your birth rate, which in turn will lead to (delayed) higher enrollments in high schools. Those are a few of the levers, a good El Presidente will have wrecked a few island societies before figuring it all out.