How to get more workforce - Frostpunk 2

Increasing your workforce lets you build new districts, populate factories, and even send workers to other cities in Frostpunk 2.

11 bit studios
1

A big workforce in Frostpunk 2 makes it possible to build districts, maintain resource acquisition, and even explore the icy frontier. However, problems start to arise if your population gets sick or injured, and suddenly you can’t build anything new because of a lack of workers. At this point, you’ll need to do a couple of things: take care of your current workers and get more workforce into your cities.

How to get more workforce

To increase your workforce, you must increase your population in Frostpunk 2. The reason for this is that your workforce is a percentage of your population, and this value cannot be manually adjusted. Sometimes passing a law will increase this percentage, such as allowing unskilled workers to perform tasks or even laws that approve child labor. There are a few other ways to get more workforce:

  • Treat the sick and injured workers already active by building hospitals
  • Transfer workers from one city to another
  • Manually reduce the number of workers in a given district
  • Pass laws that let more people work or improves the efficiency of those already working
A close up of the Hospital building in Frostpunk 2
The Hospital is needed to quickly treat the injured or sick workers.
Source: Shacknews

Another way to improve your workforce numbers is to actually help treat the sick or injured workers. To do this, build a hospital in a housing district (by first expanding the district). This will help those out of commission workers convalesce. Take a look at our guide on how to get Prefabs if you're running low.

The reason your workers are getting sick and injured could be due to poor equipment, a lack of training, or squalor. Try cleaning up the streets by addressing where districts are built. For the actual equipment and training, pass laws that allow for better machinery or the training of workers to be capable of handling the work.

The transfer workers screen
Transferring works will let you quickly populate a struggling city.
Source: Shacknews

You can also transfer workers to a new city in the same way as transferring resources. This is especially useful if a new location is particularly dangerous and you just need bodies to solve the problem. At the top-right of the screen, click the icon of the city that needs workers and then choose the Send People button. The workers will be subtracted from one location and be sent to the next, so they will take a few weeks to reach their destination. It will also mean one city will have a reduced population while they are away, but you can always send them back.

Reducing the workforce requirements of a district
Reducing the number of workers in a district will impact it's output but it will free up more workforce.
Source: Shacknews

Finally, you can artificially increase your workforce by reducing the number of people working in a specific district. For example, if your food district is operating at 100 percent, try dropping it down to 60 percent to free up some workers. This is useful if you have a good surplus of a particular resource and don’t need to commit as many workers to maintain it.

A healthy workforce is your backbone in Frostpunk 2. Without people, you cannot build districts, without districts you can’t keep people happy, and with unhappy people you’re going to struggle to survive. Take a look at our Frostpunk 2 page for more help surviving the frozen world.

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler 

Filed Under
From The Chatty
Hello, Meet Lola