Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

General discussion related to the game goes here.

Moderators: Balthagor, Legend, Moderators

Post Reply
irfanahmed1979
Major
Posts: 162
Joined: Dec 29 2013
Human: Yes
Location: Lahore, Pakistan

Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by irfanahmed1979 »

1. How is it determined?
2. What can one do to keep it from reaching 3% or below when the warning messages start appearing?
3. Does taxation have any affect on it?
4. Speaking of taxation, does a low corporate tax really trigger a lot of corporate activity as claimed in the game manual? If so, how does one notice its result in the game?

My own personal observations are: Too much research, too quickly reduces unemployment very quickly. On the other hand if I close down 300 coal power plants and around 200 petrol power plants at the start, it doesn't affect my unemployment rate. Also at the start of the game the unemployment may be high but can come down within a year or two due to heavy construction and research.
way2co0l
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 687
Joined: Nov 29 2010
Human: Yes

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by way2co0l »

irfanahmed1979 wrote: Jul 28 2018 1. How is it determined?
2. What can one do to keep it from reaching 3% or below when the warning messages start appearing?
3. Does taxation have any affect on it?
4. Speaking of taxation, does a low corporate tax really trigger a lot of corporate activity as claimed in the game manual? If so, how does one notice its result in the game?

My own personal observations are: Too much research, too quickly reduces unemployment very quickly. On the other hand if I close down 300 coal power plants and around 200 petrol power plants at the start, it doesn't affect my unemployment rate. Also at the start of the game the unemployment may be high but can come down within a year or two due to heavy construction and research.
1: Unemployment is basically a measurement of numerous different areas and is directly tied to inflation and loosely tied to GDP growth. Almost anything that has a slider where you inject money into the economy will also create jobs and lower unemployment, and most things that take money out of the economy into the government treasury will slow job growth down.
2: Be mindful of how you're injecting money into the economy. Research spending as you've pointed out, but facility construction, military spending, unit production, resource production sliders, social spending, ect. One thing many players don't realize is that your social spending has a hidden employment factor to it. When you increase infrastructure spending to max, you are also employing a large number of people to do these jobs. When you increase health care, you are also creating jobs. If you create more jobs than your population can sustain then unemployment will drop so if you want to control it, you pretty much need to reduce spending somewhere. Either in your research, military spending, facility construction, social spending, or resource production. A point to keep in mind with resource production will be listed further below.
3:Taxation definitely does have an effect on it as it cools the economy down. Higher domestic prices on goods has a similar effect. I do find that it doesn't tend to be as strong as social spending is, at least early on, so it can be difficult to spend on everything you want, even with maxed out taxes, without dealing with overemployment anyway. You're still going to need to make sacrifices in spending.
4: Corporate taxes definitely do have an effect on jobs created in the background, as do business taxes. Lowering them tends to create jobs in the background more quickly, and raising them tends to slow job creation down. I personally tend to keep my corporate taxes as my second highest (behind taxes on the rich) with business taxes 3rd and low taxes as my lowest of the 4. This is done partially due to the effect it has on DAR when you have unbalanced taxes while still getting the effect I want.

Now, to the issue of resource production. It's important to realize that it doesn't matter if you have 100 coal mines or 1000, outside of the maintenance costs of them. What really matters is how many of them you're actually using. If you have 1000 coal mines but you have your setting set to produce to demand rather than capacity and are actually using less than 100, then shutting down those extra 900 facilities won't actually effect your employment. All it will do is reduce your maintenance costs (which is still a good thing). You are producing at demand so not employing as many people as you could, so no one is actually in those other mines and shutting them down has no effect on employment for that reason. However, if you shut down enough mines so that producing to demand is equivalent to producing at capacity, then shutting down further plants WILL have an effect on your employment. What matters is how much of your capacity you are using, and when you are producing at full capacity and then start reducing that capacity, you are removing jobs in the process. A good way to help with the balancing is to reduce a lot of your resource production so that you're only producing at demand for most goods, with a little extra for critical resources or trade resources, and maybe even stop producing the ones you can trade for cheaply altogether. The less you produce, the fewer people you employ, so reduce production so you're not producing more than you actually need for some reason. Stockpiling is nice, but it comes at a cost in manpower. If that's worth it to you then great, otherwise it might be worth reconsidering.
User avatar
Leafgreen
Colonel
Posts: 355
Joined: Apr 06 2006
Location: Emerald City
Contact:

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by Leafgreen »

Very very nice and simple description of employment vs spending. Bookmarked.
"That's O'neill, with two l's"
(Holds up 3 fingers)
irfanahmed1979
Major
Posts: 162
Joined: Dec 29 2013
Human: Yes
Location: Lahore, Pakistan

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by irfanahmed1979 »

way2co0l, that's the best explanation I've had so far! Thankyou.
PanzerHue
Sergeant
Posts: 13
Joined: Nov 08 2008

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by PanzerHue »

"1: Unemployment is basically a measurement of numerous different areas and is directly tied to inflation and loosely tied to GDP growth. Almost anything that has a slider where you inject money into the economy will also create jobs and lower unemployment, and most things that take money out of the economy into the government treasury will slow job growth down.
2: Be mindful of how you're injecting money into the economy. Research spending as you've pointed out, but facility construction, military spending, unit production, resource production sliders, social spending, ect. One thing many players don't realize is that your social spending has a hidden employment factor to it. When you increase infrastructure spending to max, you are also employing a large number of people to do these jobs. When you increase health care, you are also creating jobs. If you create more jobs than your population can sustain then unemployment will drop so if you want to control it, you pretty much need to reduce spending somewhere. Either in your research, military spending, facility construction, social spending, or resource production. A point to keep in mind with resource production will be listed further below.
3:Taxation definitely does have an effect on it as it cools the economy down. Higher domestic prices on goods has a similar effect. I do find that it doesn't tend to be as strong as social spending is, at least early on, so it can be difficult to spend on everything you want, even with maxed out taxes, without dealing with overemployment anyway. You're still going to need to make sacrifices in spending.
4: Corporate taxes definitely do have an effect on jobs created in the background, as do business taxes. Lowering them tends to create jobs in the background more quickly, and raising them tends to slow job creation down. I personally tend to keep my corporate taxes as my second highest (behind taxes on the rich) with business taxes 3rd and low taxes as my lowest of the 4. This is done partially due to the effect it has on DAR when you have unbalanced taxes while still getting the effect I want."


GREAT way to explain the mechanics!

I have tried to test out how debt affect unemployment (according to the above): loan payment and interests take money out of the economy and into the government treasury.
In the "Finance" tab under "expenses"/"Treasury" theres a post for "Loan payments" and "Interests".

But, I find it hard to notice any affect on GDP/Inflation and Unemployment by taking up debt.

Any thoughts on this?
Jorias
Corporal
Posts: 2
Joined: Mar 20 2011
Human: Yes

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by Jorias »

PanzerHue wrote: Aug 10 2019 "1: Unemployment is basically a measurement of numerous different areas and is directly tied to inflation and loosely tied to GDP growth. Almost anything that has a slider where you inject money into the economy will also create jobs and lower unemployment, and most things that take money out of the economy into the government treasury will slow job growth down.
2: Be mindful of how you're injecting money into the economy. Research spending as you've pointed out, but facility construction, military spending, unit production, resource production sliders, social spending, ect. One thing many players don't realize is that your social spending has a hidden employment factor to it. When you increase infrastructure spending to max, you are also employing a large number of people to do these jobs. When you increase health care, you are also creating jobs. If you create more jobs than your population can sustain then unemployment will drop so if you want to control it, you pretty much need to reduce spending somewhere. Either in your research, military spending, facility construction, social spending, or resource production. A point to keep in mind with resource production will be listed further below.
3:Taxation definitely does have an effect on it as it cools the economy down. Higher domestic prices on goods has a similar effect. I do find that it doesn't tend to be as strong as social spending is, at least early on, so it can be difficult to spend on everything you want, even with maxed out taxes, without dealing with overemployment anyway. You're still going to need to make sacrifices in spending.
4: Corporate taxes definitely do have an effect on jobs created in the background, as do business taxes. Lowering them tends to create jobs in the background more quickly, and raising them tends to slow job creation down. I personally tend to keep my corporate taxes as my second highest (behind taxes on the rich) with business taxes 3rd and low taxes as my lowest of the 4. This is done partially due to the effect it has on DAR when you have unbalanced taxes while still getting the effect I want."


GREAT way to explain the mechanics!

I have tried to test out how debt affect unemployment (according to the above): loan payment and interests take money out of the economy and into the government treasury.
In the "Finance" tab under "expenses"/"Treasury" theres a post for "Loan payments" and "Interests".

But, I find it hard to notice any affect on GDP/Inflation and Unemployment by taking up debt.

Any thoughts on this?
Would it be fair to say that, given all this information; which is basically an awesome way to explain the whole Economy in SRU, that doing all this only helps to "grow" the economy in the sense that it makes it a certain sector of it more efficient at it.

Like for example if you cut research spending and all forms of social spending across the board, you then have an enconomy ready to build a military? Because if you even gently try to nudge any other aspect of your economy (increasing production in a certain good for more than just sustainability). It almost feels like im just shuffling the same amount of chairs around. I even saw a post that one person was able to sustain the worlds demand for oil with 1 hex, because he ruled the whole world....WTF kind of sense does that make? lol
sulley
Sergeant
Posts: 13
Joined: Nov 18 2019
Human: Yes

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by sulley »

The responses generated in this thread illustrate that employment levels are affected by a multiplicity of economic and diplomatic factors, each having a tug or pull effect with varying degrees of potency. I'll build slightly on the very helpful post by way2cool, by pointing out some additional factors that could play into employment levels.

1. Free movement of labour and net migration. The free movement of labour is the bedrock of a dynamic developed economy. Japan is a good example of what happens when a developed country is resistant to accepting foreign workers

Employment levels are calculated as a percentage of your population. Therefore the aim is to increase the population quicker than you can generate new jobs.

You can boost the population by striking free movement of labour deals with nations that have a high population count, but low GDP/C. That is because migrants from poorer nations will generally move to richer nations, and people from richer nations will not generally migrate in droves to poorer countries. Try and avoid striking 'movement of labour deals' with nations wealthier than your own, as that may encourage emigration. In this respect, developing diplomatic relations with poorer countries has value in the long run because they are a source of labour.

You can encourage immigration by investing in infrastructure, but this has the paradoxical effect of decreasing unemployment further, so look to invest in areas such as the environment and culture which we can speculate results in less employment per $ spent v infrastructure spending, but is associated with increased levels of immigration.

2. The size of your military. Military units are not free units - your army employs personnel from the general population. Decreasing the size of your army will increase unemployment/the labour pool.

3. Health expenditure. I'd be very careful about decreasing expenditure here as a means to increase unemployment. The best way to increase unemployment is to increase the population. Good healthcare reduces deaths. Any cuts in this area may deliver a short term benefit to unemployment numbers but could be counter-productive in the long run if you cut too fast or too deep.

4. The non-literal nuclear option: invade foreign lands. Expanding your territory increases your population and the labour pool. This is not a sustainable approach and not one routinely recommended by economists, but there is a time and place for everything, right?

My philosophy in SRU is economic growth at all costs. You can cut employment and maintain GDP growth with sufficient planning and foresight - don't attempt a controlled recession because that doesnt exist, and don't crash the economy because you are kicking the can down the road. Employment levels and economic growth can actually be mutually exclusive.

DISCLAIMER: these factors will not decrease employment in isolation. As way2cool explains in his post above, be smart with taxes, facility construction and social spending.

NB: I'd be very curious to know if high levels of welfare spending (ie family support and social assistance) is a disincentive for employment in SRU. Do we have any official info on this?
sulley
Sergeant
Posts: 13
Joined: Nov 18 2019
Human: Yes

Re: Somebody explain unemployment in SRU

Post by sulley »

PanzerHue wrote: Aug 10 2019 I have tried to test out how debt affect unemployment (according to the above): loan payment and interests take money out of the economy and into the government treasury.
In the "Finance" tab under "expenses"/"Treasury" theres a post for "Loan payments" and "Interests".

But, I find it hard to notice any affect on GDP/Inflation and Unemployment by taking up debt.

Any thoughts on this?
Sovereign debt does not directly affect GDP, inflation or Unemployment.

It only impacts these things indirectly, in the sense that money being spent on interest and debt repayments is money NOT being spent on infrastructure, education, healthcare, and all the other nice things that lead to job creation, economic growth and inflation.

So in summary: debt limits growth only in the sense that your government would be spending more had they NOT had the interest or debt repayments to deal with. It could go the other way: if you take out massive debts to pump liquidity into the economy, you can actually use debt to increase employment, GDP growth and inflation!

Bottom line: it all falls down to how the government spends money. Debt in and of itself is not going to affect GDP/Inflation/Unemployment.

In theory a government could continue to borrow money forever, and it would not negatively affect employment or GDP growth. That is provided interest payments are low and only constitute a fraction of total government expenditure on a daily/monthly/yearly basis.

Hope that makes sense!

N.B: I think in real life government bonds may have a deflationary effect if the bonds are not spent, as it extracts liquidity from the economy. But SRU does not specify how government bonds are financed - are private companies buying bonds? Other nation states? Citizens? If so, nationals or foreigners? Is it money printed by the treasury and owed to itself? No idea.
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion - SRUltimate”