Immigration Office in relation to Employment

[Rum Baron]

I was just recently playing my island, and one thing I noticed (although I didn't do a careful analysis, I was dealing with the aftermath and it definitely stuck in my mind) is that when I left the setting on "Tropico First" for too long, serious distortions began occurring in my island's economy. What caused me to realize this was when my exports went to $0 two years in a row, and I realized all my dockworkers had left one of them! Then I checked my farms, and about half had either no workers, or one worker only (and I had about 10-12 sugar farms to feed a rum distillery).

It was a pain fixing this. I reset the Immigration Office to Open-Door, and I had to raise the offending dock's pay rates to $50 for a while to draw some workers in and get the backed-up export produce moving again (When you lose $30K per batch of rum produced, you notice!); after a couple of years I was back in the black and out of danger of losing all the money built up in the treasury.

My suggestion for anyone who wants to analyze this in detail would be to run an island with a lot of lower-end jobs, and see if the Immigration Office setting can cause loss of jobs in the farms and docks.

[Clever duck]

  More people were dying than were becoming of working age.  The few times I used "Tropico first" I had the clinics set on "obstetrics" form the start.

  Some scenarios have workers immigrating as fast as jobs become vacant,  even without an immigration office.

  "love it or leave it" is better than "tropico first" because "generally the least happy people emigrate".  Thus if more people immigrate than can fill jobs,  the unemployed will soon become unhappy and leave.  You need to have entertainment for the educated,  otherwise they'll be the first leavers;  ok if you have enough $ to buy replacements.

[Coconut Kid]

... when I left the setting on "Tropico First" for too long, serious distortions began occurring in my island's economy. What caused me to realize this was when my exports went to $0 two years in a row, and I realized all my dockworkers had left one of them! Then I checked my farms, and about half had either no workers, or one worker only. ...

Observation:It sounds as if you play at top speed while seldom taking a stroll around to see what is happening. Many players do that. Many others enjoy watching the details - and that is not just "mico-managing."
Of course, there is an overlay with which to check employment in all the buildings. It takes only a few seconds, and probably should be used every year or so.
Discussion: Keeping the population in balance with the jobs available is ONE of the game playing skills for Tropico.

... run an island with a lot of lower-end jobs, and see if the Immigration Office setting can cause loss of jobs employees in the farms and docks ...

Of course it can.
The Island has an In door and an Out door -- you can manage only one at a time with the Immigration Office.

• Open-Door Immigration: In = no restriction ; Out = no restriction. You really don't need the building (or its staff) if this is your usual setting.
• Skilled Workers Welcome: In = HS & College educated workers encouraged ; Out = no restriction.
• Tropico First: In = Closed ; Out = no restriction.
• Love It or Leave It: In = no restriction ; Out = Unhappy encouraged.
• Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive: In = no restriction ; Out = Closed.

.
To maintain a balanced employment, the player has to keep number of game elements in balance and can not rely mostly on the Immigration Office. Likewise, it is important to monitor, at least in a general way, what is happening to the population.

 

[Rum Baron]

Well, in general. I use the Immigration Office to stabilize population at intervals when I need to create services (housing, medical care, etc) and avoid having population growth eat into the catching-up I'm doing, when I've built up enough cash in the kitty to begin spending on construction without the danger of the boom-and-bust cycle of exports catching me when the treasury goes negative for one year and then comes back to positive the next (which happens when one runs the island's finances right to the edge).

But as this thread shows, it's possible to be caught flatfooted without doing more micromanaging. I admit I don't pay much attention to the age profile of the population, but considering demographic shifts can often be a precursor to other effects, lesson learned.

[Clever duck]

  It's great for skilled workers at the start of a game.  The only problem is that most of them go into uneducated jobs and have to be looked up in the "education" "list" to be fired into better jobs.

[Coconut Kid]

... most of them go into uneducated jobs and have to be looked up in the "education" "list" to be fired into better jobs.

It's too bad that this discussion didn't go on longer. Clever Duck's "better job" was from his view and not from the "Tropican's" view. Of course, we have to cut him slack because he didn't know about the Faction weighting in the algorithm for job selection.


The building can not be considered a "cure-all" for any employee quantity problem. Unfortunately, too many players try to use the Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive! option to try to retain some educated specialists. Actually, that's a self-defeating routine.  Well, perhaps all the "iron-fist" techniques have a back-fire. The "happy-happy" techinques also have their back-fires because there is never quite enough.