Urban center pops

[Mutsu Ara Ara~]

So playing Japan and my standard of living is about 12.1, check my pops most are doing very well, even some labourers are about 20 SOL. So I'm wondering okay who is suffering.

Well I check the urban centers and find lots of starving or struggling pops. I have no clue how to help them, subsidies are very expensive for urban centers but without them they just collapse. Why are they so unprofitable? Don't most if not all pops need services?

[equinox1911]

Yeah thats a lategame issue, you thend to overproduce Services thus making the urban centers not so profitable, leading em to cut wages.
Only the last production method, the arcades, gets most of the laborers an upgrade to clerks...

[Dray Prescot]

Whatever they are producing is not profitable, which you need to fix somehow: either produce less of it, or find a way to use or Trade away more of it to raise it's prices. or find a way to lower the price of the Inputs to those Pops.

[shiggies713]

well its almost certainly a lack of coal or glass. Doesn't matter who I play as, I always end up being the world supply of glass.

You could falsely raise the price of services by putting a consumer tax on it but i would only recommend this if SoL is not an issue at all and/or you're struggling to balance your budget.

[teron]

One other thing is that services cover 4 different pop needs in the early game since they tend to be a catch all bucket.
Services
Free Movement
Communications
Art

So as time goes on, you start to bring alternatives into the market which that some demand away. Good example is Free movement which also has Transportation and Automobiles. So when you build your first railway line, you will see pops start switching their free movement demand from services to transportation.

Also meant that in my Finland game, when I started building railways, all my transport supply was being demanded by pops. Specifically Russia since I was in their market. so it meant that I was not able to flip stuff over to using rail goods to free up labour for awhile.

[Tasteless]

also the alternatives good aren't all the same, the based price of the good determine the different in that good. Like food with a base price of $10 is equal to TWO food that has a base price of $5.