Workforce

Workforce is an island-wide resource which is required by some buildings to perform their functions. Residences are the main source of workforce, the bigger the population, the more workforce is available. Workforce is separated into several tiers, each provided by a particular population tier. Every building which requires workforce requires a specific type and a specific amount of it. Insufficient workforce reduces the effectiveness of those buildings, it can be only lowered or in some cases it can even be reduced to zero, making those buildings nonfunctional. For example a fishery requires 25 units of farmers workforce, no other type of workforce can be utilised by a fishery and having less than 25 farmer workforce available will proportionally lower the productivity of the fishery. Unemployment, i.e. having excessive workforce, has no direct effects on the gameplay, it is generally better to have a surplus of workforce instead of a deficit.

Your island's workforce balance is displayed on the top part of the screen. After hovering over specific workforce type you can learn how many people of this tier provide workforce and how many people are currently employed.

Sources of workforce

There are four sources of workforce in the game:

• Residences
• Expansion influence bonus
• Passive effect of Department of Administration of the Palace - requires Seat of Power DLC
• Anarchy propaganda - requires The Anarchist DLC

Residences are the first and main source of workforce. Each residence provides the same amount of workforce as the number of people living inside. Each residence provides workforce of its tier, for example worker residences provide worker workforce but not any other type of workforce. Since each workforce-based building requires a specific type of workforce, it is important to have enough residences of each tier to provide sufficient amount of workforce of each type. To gain more workforce from residences you can build more residences, fulfill their basic needs and use town hall items (to increase amount of inhabitants living in each residence, or workforce generated by it, or both at the same time).
The placement of residences does not matter, workforce is an island-wide resource - wherever your residences are located on the island, the workforce gained from them is added to the island's pool. The placement of buildings which utilise workforce also is insignificant, they have access to the island's workforce pool from any part of the island.
The residences cannot provide any workforce if they are affected by city incidents or if they have no road connection to the harbour.

If you settle enough islands, buy enough shares of your competitors' islands or have enough commuter piers, you can acquire an expansion influence bonus. It provides free workforce of each possible tier to all your islands in Old World, Cape Trelawney and New World. The bonus does not affect other regions. The amount of workforce provided (50, 100 or 200 of each type) depends on the strength of the bonus, i.e. the amount of influence invested into expansion.

Seat of Power DLC allows to utilise the passive effect of the Palace's Department of Administration to gain more workforce in Old World or Cape Trelawney. It adds more workforce to the island's pool for each town hall within the range of the palace or local department (if the Department of Administration is selected). The base effect provides +50 workforce for each type, gaining prestige levels for high attractiveness on the island with the Palace can greatly increase the amount of workforce obtained per each town hall.

One of the articles from anarchy propaganda, available if you have Dr. Hugo Mercier as one of your competitors, provides +125 workforce of each type on every one of your islands in Old World, Cape Trelawney, New World and Enbesa. As newspaper has no effect in The Arctic, using this propaganda article will not increase the workforce in that region. Be careful when using this propaganda article, it has a downside of increasing consumption of all goods by 25% for the entire population in all affected regions.

The purpose of workforce

In order to maintain or increase the population a constant supply of their needs is necessary. This includes, among other things, producing goods and constructing ships. Those tasks cannot be completed without workforce of different population tiers as its the workforce that is responsible for ensuring that many buildings are operational. Those buildings can be belong to several groups:

• Production buildings - require workforce to produce goods for the population, insufficient workforce increases their production time thus decreasing production rate
• Multifactories - function in the same way as production buildings with regards to workforce
• Food & Drink Venues - require tourists (as customers) and to be within the bus network, no bus connection makes them nonfunctional, while insufficient amount of tourists lowers the fulfilment of appropriate tourists need and lowers the percentage of the consumption reduction bonus for other residences
• Shopping Arcades - require artisan workforce, insufficient workforce lowers the fulfilment of appropriate needs of skyscrapers and lowers the percentage of the consumption reduction bonus for other residences
• Monuments - they require workforce during their construction stages, insufficient workforce extends the duration of the construction, if lack of workforce is large enough the construction stops completely; some monuments also require workforce once they are finished, like World's Fair requiring investor workforce; they have an ability to mobilise workforce from other buildings
• Sailing Shipyard and Steam Shipyard - require workforce to construct ships, insufficient workforce extends the construction time, they have an ability to mobilise workforce from other buildings

Almost every single building from those groups requires a particular amount of workforce from specific tier to operate at 100% of its possible efficiency. If there is a lack of workforce of a particular type then this deficit is shared between all buildings which require the same type of workforce - their efficiency is lower, for example production time is longer and producitivity is lower than 100%. In some cases to compensate the deficit you can adjust working conditions but it can have a negative impact on the happiness of your population and will increase riot chances at your production buildings.

Monuments (mostly during construction phases) and shipyards have an ability to mobilise workforce from other buildings. When this ability is toggled on, workforce of the same type focuses on working in that building instead of other buildings which utilise the same workforce tier. For example a sailing shipyard in Old World requires worker workforce, if the amount of this workforce on the island is too low and workforce is mobilised at the shipyard, the shipyard will reserve as many workers as necessary to ensure maximal possible efficiency. At the same time, however, other buildings which use worker workforce will operate with an efficiency that is reduced accordingly to the increased deficit caused by the shipyard.

Some items can change what type of workforce and how much of it is required by your buildings. It is possible to make some buildings require zero workforce, in such cases the buildings will be functional even when no workforce at all is available on the island.

Workforce transfer

Workforce does not have to be generated on the same island where it is used. Workforce can be transferred between multiple islands, effectively combining the workforce pools of these islands into one global workforce pool, shared between all islands which belong to the commuter network within the same region. That way only one or some of the islands can have residences built on them, while other islands are focused on production and have no cities. Entire workforce of each island is shared, regardless of its source - all workforce from residences, the palace's effects or influence expansion bonus can be shared between islands.

Establishing a commuter network is possible only in the Old World and Cape Trelawney by building commuter piers on multiple islands. With  Empire of the Skies DLC it is also possible in the New World by building airship platforms with a commuter station module. Workforce is shared between islands only within one region, for example workforce from the Old World cannot be shared with islands in Cape Trelawney, and workforce from the New World cannot be shared with islands in the Old World or Cape Trelawney. Additionally, only 4 out of 7 population tiers can share their workforce in the Old World or Cape Trelawney:  Farmers,  Workers,  Artisans and  Engineers. Workforce of  Investors,  Tourists and  Scholars cannot be shared (it does not matter in case of scholars as their workforce is not used at all and they can live anywhere while still contributing towards the research).

Transferring workforce interacts with a few game mechanics in the following ways:

• Can unlock city incidents on islands which local population is below an incident unlock condition. If one of the islands within the commuter network has enough population living on it and an incident is unlocked there, the incident also becomes unlocked on all other islands within the commuter network. But when none of the islands has enough population, the incident cannot occur on any of the islands in the network.
• The effects of working conditions and pollution on population's happiness are local and situation on one island does not affect other islands within the commuter network. If one island contains many production buildings which generate pollution or where working conditions are different than default ones, the population living on other islands within the commuter network is unaffected by the pollution or working conditions - only the local population of the island with the production experiences appropriate effects. The effects of working conditions on incident chances are also only local.
• Calculation of working conditions effects can be slightly different if a part of the employed workforce originates from different islands. When an island has a surplus of workforce due to the workforce it generates on its own, the calculation of working conditions effect refers to the amount of workforce the island generates. However, if an island would have a negative workforce balance on its own and receives some workforce from other islands, then the effect is calculated based on the overall amount of workforce employed on the island. In that situation workforce from other islands contributes to the calculation of the effect which has no impact on those islands' populations, but affects only the local population of the island where production is located.

Workforce transfer makes it possible to have residences and generate workforce on one island, while using that workforce on another island, and in combination with the interactions explained above, this can be used in multiple ways and for several reasons, for example:

• Separating production from residences. It can be done only for aesthetic purposes but can also help with increasing happiness and attractiveness of the island with the city by locating polluting or vulgar production on another island.
• Separating different population tiers. Having islands dedicated to only some population tiers can make the management of goods and trade routes easier. For example, instead of having all population tiers on both islands, one island may have only investors while the rest of the population is on another island. Then some goods have to be delivered only to one of the two islands, while otherwise they would be delivered to two islands making it harder to establish necessary trade network, which would ensure that both islands receive enough goods.
• Making space for higher tiers on the main island. If the main island starts running out of free land, relocating residences of the lowest tiers to another island can free up a lot of space. Connecting them into a commuter network allows to make the transition more smoothly and keep the production necessary for the higher tiers still on the main island.
• Spreading population across multiple islands to maximise income and decrease royal taxes. Since royal taxes appear only when population of one tier on a single island is big enough, moving a part of the population to another island can decrease the amount of balance lost due to taxes. Commuter network allows to freely place production on either island as needed without being limited by local population being low.