Frostpunk 2: How To Increase Your Workforce

In Frostpunk 2, your workforce is what gets the job done. With enough people in the workforce, you'll be able to construct buildings and new districts, as well as frostbreak new areas. Of course, Frostpunk 2 is not an easy game, so you may find yourself without enough people in the workforce from time to time.

In this guide, we are going to take a look at how you can increase your workforce in Frostpunk 2. This will cover getting more people within your city in general, reducing workforce limits, and transferring your workforce between colonies under your control.

How To See Your Total Workforce

To see your total workforce, head to the upper lefthand side of your screen. Here, you can see your total population, as well as the total amount of people in your workforce.

When hovering over these numbers, you'll be able to see a full breakdown of what your population is doing. Using the image above, you can see that we have an available workforce of 12,280 people. This means that we can comfortably use workers without running out.

You'll even be able to see exactly how the workforce is separated among everything in your city, down to how many people are working at any prisons that you have built.

How To Get New Workers

The best way to get brand-new workers is to have them move into your city. This can happen periodically, but you can also find them in the Frostland. While exploring, you may find small communities around the map that are willing to move into the city; if you're in need of workers, then this is great!

When accepting in new people, it's important to consider housing and food. While more people in your workforce is great, you may accidentally cause some tension due to a lack of resources and living space. This can quickly be remedied by adding new housing or food districts.

If there are no groups of people in your immediate area in the Frostland, consider exploring new regions. When hovering over unexplored areas, you can see the possible findings, with Frostland dwellers being an option.

Weather Station

Within the Frosttland, you may also find a Weather Station. This acts as a beacon, as people will be able to see it from a far distance. When the Weather Station is active, you will have increased population growth. Keep in mind that the station requires some frostland teams in order to remain active (you will also be able to disable it).

How To Create A New Workforce From Your Existing Population

It's also possible to tweak the percentage of active workers in your city. For example, by proposing and enacting the Family Apprenticeship law, your workforce will slightly increase. This is because children in your city will begin to work alongside adult relatives, adding to the percentage of active workers.

Family Apprenticeships aren't the only way to increase the workforce percentage. Another step you can take is to research on the Youth node of the Society tab of the Idea Tree. This will give you the choice between Dutiful Youth and Liberated Youth, which provide the following benefits.

Dutiful Youth

Liberated Youth

Percentage of active workers increased

Crime slightly decreased

Unlocked Youth Volunteer Duty ability (bolsters workforce and lowers trust)

Trust rises

Unlocks Youth Employment Programme ability (bolsters workforce and decreases Heatstamp income)

Both ideas will increase the workforce through a city ability, but with Dutiful Youth, you can maintain the increased amount of workers without enacting any ability.

You can also research Communal Parenthood (on the Parenthood node of the Society tab), which will significantly increase the total percentage of active workers.

How To Decrease Workforce Requirements

Doing things in Frostpunk 2 requires a certain amount of people, but what if this amount could be lowered? The good news is that this is possible! One possible law that you can enact is Machine Attendants. This will lower the workforce requirements, as machines will be optimized to work.

You can also enable Machine-Centric Shifts, which will decrease the workforce requirement too. Keep in mind that this will increase squalor as well, which may not be ideal if you are dealing with a squalor problem in your city.

Take Care Of Sick & Injured Workers

When your workers get hurt or become sick, they will no longer be part of the active workforce. While they may recover and not cause too much of an effect on your workforce, high levels of disease can really leave its mark.

If your city is suffering from a high disease rate, consider dealing with this in order to get more workers. By hovering over the disease icon in the center of the screen, you can check out what is making the disease rate high; two leading factors may be squalor and cold.

How To Transfer Your Workforce

If you have a lot of workers in your main city, but not enough in a colony, you can transfer your workforce between locations. This is great if your main city has a lot of workers that you don't need, while your colonies are struggling to find enough people.

To transfer workers, head to the upper right-hand side of the screen. Here, you can click on the colony and see three icons, with the middle one resembling a group of people that have arrows going in either direction.

By clicking on this, you will be able to transfer people between your cities. The slider will show the total amount of people, as well as how many people in the workforce that it includes. This is a good way to spread out your population.

Build An Air Transport Hub

By researching and building an Air Transport Hub, you can also decrease the workforce requirement of nearby areas. This is a great way to free up some workers to use in other areas of the city, but it's important to note that the building has a heat and material demand, so it's best to disable it when you don't need extra workers.

The Air Transport Hub alone is not enough to bolster the workforce, but when paired with other methods on this list, you will have a decent amount of active workers to complete tasks in the city.

Adjust Workforce At Existing Districts

Lastly, you are able to adjust the efficiency of a district in order to free up some workers for another task. For example, if you don't have enough people to frostbreak an area, you can temporarily lower the percentage slider to create more active workers for frost breaking.

This is also a great way to lower the demand for resources within the district, which can be handy if you are experiencing a shortage of anything. Overall, not every district may need to run at maximum efficiency, so be sure to play around with these sliders to find the sweet spot.

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