Where do all the workers go? 0% unemployment all the time.

[Stranger]

Guys, sorry for the lame question, I tried looking it up but there is too many various discussions on the same topics from different years.

I just started with the game and with first campaign.
I have barely any buildings.
And almost 2500 workers (3500+ people in total).
And 0% unemployment.
What do all they do?! My math doesn't add up.
- Distillery: 100 max
- Food Factory: 170 max
- Fabric Factory: 100 max
- Clothing Factory: 80 max
Several other buildings like firefighters, hospital and uni add another couple hundreds.
In total I can sum it up to around 500-700 hundred.
What do another 1500 do?!
Any way to find out?

[melkij]

3 work shifts for 24/7 work. (even in kindergarten, Doubtful But Okay)
Given time fluctuations and travel times, one food factory can employ 550-600 workers in total without much difficulty.

[Phoenix]

Citizens work 8 hours a day, Buildings work in shifts, 3x8 hours. Thus, one workplace requires 3 workers to be staffed over a full day.

[Stranger]

Oh, so it is all x3? Ok, makes sense then. Thanks.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Stranger:

Oh, so it is all x3? Ok, makes sense then. Thanks.

This is a simplification, but is true enough in most cases. Certain inefficiencies, like making your citizens walk long distances to work or having citizens time out in public transportation, will raise this ratio to 4 or even 5 workers per job. If you really know what you're doing though, then you can reduce this ratio to as little as 2 workers per job.

[mrddrm]

Do you have any buildings being built? I'm a returning player and this caught me. Each building you need to reduce the workers outside the CO otherwise those building projects will suck up available workers before your industry.

Otherwise, what the others have said is true, it's actually 3 shifts. Another question for you to possibly reduce workforce at specific buildings... do you need all those workers? A lot of folk will reduce the workforce at specific places to better divert workers elsewhere.

[Dan]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by Stranger:

Oh, so it is all x3? Ok, makes sense then. Thanks.

This is a simplification, but is true enough in most cases. Certain inefficiencies, like making your citizens walk long distances to work or having citizens time out in public transportation, will raise this ratio to 4 or even 5 workers per job. If you really know what you're doing though, then you can reduce this ratio to as little as 2 workers per job.

What things could you do to increase efficiency beyond needing 3 workers for a 24 hour worker slot? Seems like 3 per slot would be the absolute mathematical limit of efficiency if they're locked to doing 8-hour shifts.

(Still a very new player, so genuine question... I don't know how much of this works yet :-P)

[Stele]

Game runs on dozen different timescales at the same time. More productive worker who spent ages in transit will have slowed down internal clock. It will be still 8h shift for him but will take more of global clock. Try not to think about it.

[Silent_Shadow]

Time is all over the place in this game, and most citizen times, like work shift, free time, and ride time limits, are not a constant amount of time (the IRL length of their "hours" will vary).

The reason you need about three workers per jobs is because each citizens' day is balanced so that they spend about a third of their time working on average. There are four parts to a citizen's day:

• Travel time to work - Basically how long it takes for a citizen to get to a job. As a citizen waits at a station or rides in a vehicle, their total time travelling timer will increment, which affects a couple things. Exceeding "5 hours" will also make citizens upset, decreasing their loyalty and happiness.
  
  
• Work shift - Citizens spend more time working with a higher total time travelling count, which helps to balance out the variable travel times they can have in this game, but they stop adding to their work time after about "4 hours" of travel time. Depending on the total time traveling timer and a small random factor, citizens can spend between 50 and 280 seconds working each cycle. Rarely citizens can work even longer, but this "shock worker" phenomenon seems to be random.
  
  
• Spread delay wait - After work, citizens will wait in their home for a random amount of time between 0 and 90 seconds. The main point of this wait is to ensure citizens are not all trying to work or satisfy demands at the same time and to decrease the influence of the other factors on a citizens working time percentage (hence the name, spread delay). Car owners are notable in that if they drove to work, they can skip the spread delay wait if they drive straight to service buildings.
  
  
• Free time - Citizens then go out to try and satisfy their needs, which will be amplified by how high the total time traveled timer got; they will consume more products (food, meat, alcohol, etc.) and spend more time doing activities (culture, sports, etc.), provided the have the free time to do so. The actual IRL time they spend satisfying these needs will be constant for consuming products but variable for activities. Walking and waiting during free time will also consume free time to do, but generally free time will be relatively constant unless you have them commuting a long distance for needs or refuse to provide a need or attraction types to replace it.

Ways to maximize the time they spend working are:
• Have citizens travel for "4 hours" to work.
• Minimize the amount of walking they have to do.
• Give them personal cars with short routes to work and needs (driving takes time too).
• Ensure all needs are satisfied promptly.
• Encourage alcohol addiction so extra IRL time isn't needed to satisfy their leisure need.

Having high loyalty, health, and happiness also raises the productivity of workers above 100%, which allows them to do more work than normal and effectively run a factory at 100% production without having close to full staffing. Combined with some of the points above, you can achieve a worker/job ratio below three.

[Dan]

Cheers for the breakdown. Very informative!