I know I have talked about this before, but it really needs to be brought up again given how much the balance around unemployment changed when illegal immigration got added.
I could swear I remember commenting that a maxed out economy produced a -45% on unemployment, but now I can’t find it. Regardless, in my current game the GDP is at 100% which produces a meager -29% on unemployment. This seems absurdly weak to me, I don’t have any figures in front of me to quote a more accurate number, but it definitely needs to be stronger.
At this point, I would like to float a challenge out to the community (and if Cliffski himself joined in on this one I’d be very happy). The challenge is this: Create a labour shortage. In the current build, with no mods or anything, make the economy lack for available workers. I don’t even know if there is a “Labour shortage” red bubble in the game, that is how hard of a time I already had getting unemployment down even before illegal immigration. If none exists, than…less than 10%? Sure, 10% sounds good. How do I even make that happen?
I tried it last night, initially I had gotten unemployment totally abolished, even despite getting rid of the State options for things, and switching entirely to private.
I had a budget surplus, I was chipping away at the debt, Education, Health, GDP, got maxed out. All was great.
Thennnnnn immigration started to suddenly shoot up, despite having even closed airports, banned every foreign church, got rid of the Law and Order effects that improve racial tension, enforced the toughest standards for all immigration. It still shot back up, and while it doesn’t give me a figure for unemployment, it looks around about 20-25% now, and the Illegal Immigration crisis is back too.
I also think that the GDP should affect much more the level of unemployment. And a labour shortage situation would be a nice addition, it could come with another policy like work visas.