Hello my fellow gamers and Cities: Skylines majors to this guide about the problems of Not enough workers and Not enough educated workers which leads to abandoned buildings. I am going to explain to you the workers and workplaces game mechanics as well as all the issues which often arise from these concepts and show you what is responsible for them.

If you prefer to watch a guide rather then read, you can see a video explanation here:


As this guide, like all my previous tutorials and guides, is for both newcomers and experienced players it will be informative but also educational. Which is kinda funny but also appropriate because half of the problem I will be talking about is the education of in game Cims.


So let’s first address the main difference between two similar issues which have completely different causes. The not enough workers and not enough educated workers messages you get from industrial and commercial zones respectively.


But do keep in mind that later I will explain why the message on the industrial buildings can be caused by two separate underlying problems.


I am going to use this totally new city purpose built for this video guide to showcase this to you. I actually made it into its own video as I enjoyed building it so much that I made a speed build timelapse video of it for your viewing please.
Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAASU9mRUmI

Since every city begins with residential zones it inevitably has unemployment issues after first Cims move in. This is first reduced by zoning for commercial shops, as they require some workers, and then completely rectified by adding generic industry which has the most workplaces of any zonable building, especially once it levels up.


The balance of workers and workplaces, is quickly achieved for one simple reason. All the open jobs are for uneducated Cims. And this is exactly the level of education all new Cims move in with. You can clearly see this using the education overlay as it will show you the breakdown of Cims education levels.


So as long as you keep adding new RCI zones in a balanced fashion, something I explained in depth in my previous tutorial about RCI zone demand and the lack there off,
Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPH3ptqHVAo

you won’t have any reason to get the not enough workers or educated workers message? Right?

Well… no.

It is quite more complicated than that. The first education level cims can reach is from elementary schools and it’s called educated, as opposed to their original uneducated level. This is all part of the regular progression the game guides you through with the milestones when you play in the normal mode.


The shops, built in commercial zones, are the ones which have a dual need for such Cims. First reason is that they can not level up unless wealthy Cims stop by to shop in them, and the second reason is that once they do level up they have new open jobs which now require more and better educated Cims. An example of this is a level two shop which requires uneducated, educated and even well educated Cims.


And just to clarify, in this game education, among other things, increases land value which makes for wealthier citizens. So no education means no wealth. We will circle back to this later in the guide.


Another important concept to understand is that children don’t work but spend their time getting educated. So they make up the wealthy and educated Cims who go into shops making them level up, while you still don’t have older Cims, who are of working age, who can go and work in the workplaces for the educated. You have to wait for those kids who have higher levels of education to become old enough to work in those workplaces in shops.


And here is where we come to the next problem. Where are these well educated Cims to come from? Because at this point you most likely don’t have a high school built and even if you do there hasn’t been enough time for your Cims to go from uneducated to educated in schools and then from educated to well educated in that high school and grow up to become part of the workforce.


But the shops don’t care, they have open jobs, new workplaces with those requirements. This is by game design. Now.. I don’t want to go into whether this should or shouldn't be like this as there is enough in that for an entire video so we will take this fact at its face value for the duration of this guide.

And this lack of educated workers gets even worse, because as soon as some of your Cims get that high school degree and visit a shop it can level up once more to its final third level. And at that level it requires even better, highly educated workers. Ones that only a university can deliver.


This is quite a high requirement and it’s often far away from the players price range and unlock level in a normal game. This is also the point at which most players first face abandoned buildings because there is simply no way they can deliver highly educated workers so soon.


The shops will put up the not enough educated workers sigh and even put up with the lack there off for a time, but in the majority of cases this will end with the shop being abandoned because of this problem.


The most annoying but also quite interesting thing about all of this is that the player not only can’t do anything about this, besides building that high school and university, but he, you, just have to wait.


That is right, you haven’t done anything wrong. You followed the game's design and this abandonment is actually because you followed the game's rules to the letter. These shops, they are the ones which level up too fast, faster than their open jobs can be filled by Cims who can’t gain educated levels at that same speed.

I know this is probably the last advice you have expected to get about this problem but it is actually the best advice on how to deal with it. Simply ignore it. It goes away on its own once education levels of your Cims catch up with the shops open jobs requirements for educated, well educated and highly educated workers.


And this is also a place where that wealth level of residential buildings I mentioned before comes into play.


Because not only do homes get bigger and able to accommodate more families per each new level, they also provide higher levels of wealth for those families. And this is why Cims who are actually already educated start moving into your city and into those new slots in leveled up residential homes.


So now you get newly moved in Cims who are educated and some even highly educated. This is why the wealth mechanics is multifaceted and it’s something almost all players miss even after playing the game for a long time.

All right, so I hope that clears up the whole not enough educated workers problem of commercial zones for you. I bet you learned some new things you didn’t know up to now and will remember not to do anything but wait for it to clear up next time you have this problem.

Industry zone and it’s buildings are problematic because different industrial specializations are specific in their requirements.

For example, when generic industry levels up with access to services and educated cims it requires even more educated cims of all levels.


But if you don’t give it services it will be stuck on lower levels and won’t need all those better educated Cims, creating unemployment. If you are in the process of educating your population, those generic industry buildings will be saying not enough workers. Luckily there is a mechanic and even a mod which allows for Cims to be overeducated for their workplace. But that is a whole other can of worms so let’s move on.


If you zone a lot of specialized industries on the other hand you can have both unemployment or not enough workers, depending on which kind of industry it is.


This is because your workers education level might not match the industries open jobs education requirements. You should know that agriculture and forestry specialized industry requires exclusively uneducated workers


while oil and ore specialized industry require uneducated, educated and well educated workers.


So here you might see the not enough workers sign but you won’t be able to know does it mean not enough workers in general or just not enough workers of the education level those industries require.

Here at least there are a few things you can do about it. First of all adding totally new residential zones is a simple way of adding new uneducated workers into your city.


But if you need the educated kind instead then helping older residential zones level up with higher wealth levels so educated cims move in is the way to go.


Boosing your district's education with a policy is also a viable solution.


It’s important that you follow the education overlay and the population overlay so that you can keep track of the open jobs number


as well as the unemployment percentage in correlation with the education levels and percentages of your Cims.


This will give you the extra information necessary to figure out do you lack workers in general in your city or do you just have a mismatch of education levels of your workers and workplaces.

So you might have a situation where you have unemployment and yet industrial buildings with the not enough workers sigh. This is why keeping track of multiple sets of overlays and information data sets is important to be able to figure out what is the actual cause of the multitude of problems which all end up falling under the not enough workers umbrella.

The ultimate solution can be achieved by placing a Hadron Collider wonder in your city, like I did here in my city of Bedrock which I made during a monumental 101 episode Let’s play on the hard mode with the objective of reaching 1,000,000 population which no cheats.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRYGjguAn0CHQliH0Ahn90KEH7oOvW11g


Its population is entirely highly educated but regardless of hundreds of thousands open jobs for lower educated workers they all keep working in those jobs.


This is an extreme example of the overedcuated workers mechanic which protects you from overeducated population and makes buildings operate even in this situation. It sure is gamy and not realistic but this is a game after all.


And on that note, I hope this guide was of help to you in learning to play Cities Skylies even better then before. I would like to thank you for reading and wish you happy gaming.