One player of Final Fantasy XIV discovered Ul’dah’s unemployment rate.
Final Fantasy XIV features numerous locations that reference its rich lore while at the same time telling regular people’s everyday tales of Eorzea. Due to how vast Eorzea’s world is and learning mundane subjects in each city takes time and dedication – however one dedicated player took upon themself the challenge to learn more about Ul’dah unemployment rate lore!
Reddit user “u/themadnessman” shared their findings in their post “I (Badly) Attempted to Calculate Ul’Dah’s Unemployment Rate”. Influenced by Any Austin’s Youtube channel which explores unemployment in famous locations from Pokemon Pewter City to Resident Evil 4 Valdelobos village, u/themandnessman conducted extensive research into Ul’dah society to give us an accurate picture of its inner workings and understand what’s taking place within its complex city walls.
Investigating Ul’dah Society in Final Fantasy XIV can be challenging. Here is an analysis on its difficulties of investigation.
As with any survey of this nature, u/themadnessman had to go through several tedious steps before reaching their desired answer. Since they wanted to determine the unemployment rate of NPCs in particular, this required them to first identify who would be included and then how they could ascertain whether a NPC had work (ie excluding Black Mages here).
After conducting an in-depth city mapping exercise, they determined that Ul’dah currently had approximately 430 permanent inhabitants – with students, visitors to the city, children and retirees not factored into final calculations.
They began by speaking to members of Ul’dah’s streets – including Brass Blade Guards, Immortal Flames members and Sultansworn – to conduct initial research. While such people can easily be recognized and interacted with in Ul’dah streets, much more work lay ahead as their research continued.
As players progress in the game, it can be easy to assume the characters we see walking through Gridania or Limsa Lominsa bars are inhabitants or workers within these cities – yet how does one know for certain whether these individuals live and work there?
To gain knowledge about these characters, u/themadnessman needed to use everything at their disposal. When possible, this involved engaging directly with all characters that could be interacted with, while when this wasn’t feasible they either implied who the characters are through their pop-up dialogues or simply observed and read about what visual narrative they displayed.
At the conclusion of their research, u/themadnessman came up with some fascinating numbers concerning Ul’dah in Final Fantasy XIV. For starters, 338 employed residents reside within Ul’dah while 54 residents who can neither be marked as employed nor unemployed were identified 69 characters can’t be marked either way are in-game 69 are unclassifiable by them and represent 13.8 percent of its citizenry population respectively
As explained by u/themadnessman, many unemployed in Ul’dah were “primarily situated around Pearl Alley and immediately adjacent to its city walls”, reflecting its welcoming approach towards immigration. Players unfamiliar with Ul’dah may not realize that these 54 people may be suffering more than simply trying to pay rent; money plays an increasingly vital role as an indicator of one’s worth in Ul’dahn culture.
Only time will tell whether Ul’dah ever changes – or whether u/themadnessman applies his influence across other city-states.
