Are high and medium wealth workers needed?

[EvilTom 1]

I've built cities that are mainly low wealth, yet there is usually a requirement for some medium and high wealth workers.

This is understandable but I notice even though the $$ and $$$ jobs are never filled (as a result of a choice by me) the work places always appear to function normally.

Therefore, I have to ask if they actually need to be filled for the businesses to work correctly? I've never seen one close down, but they do complain about not having good managers.

Edit: Is there a threshold where say 10% of jobs have to be filled no matter what wealth?

[endorken 13]

Yeah, there is a minimum number of workers a workplace needs to stay open. It's probably some kind of a percentage, but we don't know what it is. Also, there is a priorities list, where if you do have a worker shortage, basic services will get filled first (water, electricity, etc, fire, health, etc.). C&I is lower on the list, parks seem to be at the very bottom. If you do have a worker shortage you might see your C and your parks "closed for the day."

[EvilTom 1]

Thank you for your reply. Its especially good to learn of the priority when it comes to government services. I had assumed every building was in the same pool.

If all of the low wealth jobs are filled in a building (services or C/I), but none of the other jobs, will the building run at diminished capacity?

[endorken 13]

I think for the most part. the game doesn't care one way or another. It just needs a percentage of the total (regardless of wealth-level). But there are some weird cases -- I have a uni town, for instance -- which is really tilted towards mid- and high-wealth. Now, the uni employs 320 low-wealth, 100 mid- and 40 high-wealth -- again, I don't know what the min. requirement is for the uni to open up shop, but in my case I noticed it would still be looking for workers as late as 8am. My low-wealth workers would eventually make their way to the uni once other jobs were filled and the building would open around 8am, but I was losing out on two hours of research until I added more low-wealth R.

 

There are buildings that are similarly biased towards mid-wealth, like the electronics factory, so that's a case where not having enough mid-wealth would hurt production.

[EvilTom 1]

Cheers again for your professional and informative reply. It's much appreciated.

Your findings appear to lean toward my suspicions. I had suspected that only the minimum amount of workers of any wealth were required to have the facility run at full capacity. This would lead one to build a city with large numbers of empty jobs as your economy will keep being productive as long as the minimal are filled. This does tend to happen in my cities as I normally can never fill all of the jobs, but does seem counter to how the real world works.

As you say there is no information on the minimal numbers and it would take someone far more committed than myself to sit down and work it out. This makes it hard to figure out, especially as I've read that the figures on population are 'fudged'.