Employees do not stay no matter what I pay.

[RM33]

Many different jobs require an education. I build high schools and colleges. Then I raise pay sky high, I add entertainment, housing, churches etc . . .

They white collar workers still don't stay. Every other turn I check and the white collar workers are gone. No doctors in hospitals, no electrical workers. Again I raise the pay sky high and take care of all their needs.

Why do they leave???

[Railnut]

They must be unhappy with something.
Look in the Almanac at the People tab. Check Income Disparity to see if the rest of the Carribean is paying even more than you are.
Then check Happiness. look at the whole list to see if they are not happy with their housing or food quality or entertainment and everything else. Pick the item with the lowest rating and see what you can do to improve it.

[elHombre]

one thing to key on with the more educated workers is liberty - this is, other than the presence of both high school and college, the one factor that the intellectuals key on as far as whether they "like" tropico or not.

another thing is to have an immigration office - you set it to "skilled workers welcome" to offset the emigration or merely "no one gets out of here alive" and you can pay the bookworms whatever you like.  Just make sure you pay your immigration workers the highest wage that a high school female makes in the country or you could have a problem when they leave for another job.

[flagator_]

It's sort of a domino effect. If your educated people start to leave, those are the ones providing religion and health care for everyone else, making them unhappy, making more people leave, etc.

I price my nicer housing so that only my educated workers can afford it, and place it near their workplaces. Sometimes if a married couple work on opposite sides of the island from each other, I'll fire the less-educated one so he/she can take a job closer to their new home.

Different things make different people happy. Higher educated people are typically in the intellectual faction; check the Factions listing under the Happiness page of the almanac to see what they're happy about and what's irritating them. Intellectuals like frequent free elections, free press, good housing and educational opportunities, not just high pay.

If your educated people belong to other factions too, like environmentalists or religious, make sure the environment and religion are not being neglected.

[Melvin]

I, too, have found that housing seems to be very impotant to educated people. I've found that it works to build quality housing (apartments and up) and setting the price so only the rich can afford it. Then, evict the rich from their old homes until they move to the new nice housing. Once the new stuff is full of educated workers, lower the price to $0 (if you can afford it). This will jack their housing happiness way up and make them much more happy overall.

Also, if you can afford it, build some entertainment and set the quality to as high as it will go, then raise the price so only the rich can get in. This will help their entertainment scores alot.

[Coconut Kid]

They must be unhappy with something.  ...

Pay is NOT everything!

There is a lot of good advice in this thread. Additionally, if they are married, you have to keep their spouse happy too because when one leaves - the other goes along.