Zombie Apocalypse: Creation

As Xiaoyun stepped out of Yuqi's office, his mind was already thinking of solutions to tackle the unemployment problem.

But before he does anything, he decides to head over to the Department of Census, which is just a floor below.

"Hello, Governor." One of the staff waved after noticing him exiting the elevator.

"Hello. Do you know by any chance where the unemployment data is?"

"Um, I think it's still being collected. This month's report is supposed to come out today or tomorrow."

"How about last month's report? Can I have a look at it again?"

The work didn't question his request, bringing him over to a nearby cubicle before turning on a computer.

With a few clicks of a button, an entire report filled with data popped up all at once, before a much simpler one appeared.

"This is a report of employment back in April. Is there anything else I need to do, sir?"

Glancing over the simple report, Xiaoyun shook his head before another idea popped up in his mind.

"Actually, can you teach me how to use this program? I just want to look at the different data myself."

The staff hesitated, remaining silent as if they weren't sure if they were allowed to until a senior worker happened to walk by.

"Hey, Governor. What brought you here?" A middle-aged woman curiously asked as she approached the cubicle.

"Just trying to check out some data... You're the head of Census, right?" Xiaoyun guessed as he tried to think back to his last meeting with all department heads.

"Thank you for remembering me... Little Zhang, make sure you help the Governor with whatever request he makes."

"Yes, madam."

"Sorry, I have to go meet the deadline for Mrs.Yuqi. We can talk later if you want, Governor."

"No need. Zheng here is enough."

As the middle-aged woman headed back inside her office, Xiaoyun quickly shifted his attention back to the computer.

"Governor, do you know how to use a computer?" Zheng asked, inputting some sort of password to bypass some of the locks.

"Of course I do. Just help me with this, and you can be on your merry way..."

---

Ten minutes later.

"Governor, do you get how to use this fully now?" Zheng asked as he handed the mouse over to Xiaoyun.

"I think so... You can go back to work now. Thank you for your help."

"No problem, Governor... You can ask someone nearby if you find something you don't understand."

"Okay. Now I'm all alone."

With Zheng gone, Xiaoyun started exploring the census's special program interface as several large headings popped up all at once.

Based on the label, it was ten different general categories from public inventory all the way to specific personal information.

Out of curiosity, he decided to click on the personal information, only to see a bunch of names pop up on the screen in a long list.

Every single basic information he could think of was being collected.

From the person's single status to even their dominant hand. They were fully visible right next to the person's name.

"I probably shouldn't look at this..."

Despite saying this to himself, he couldn't help but put his name into the search list. To no one's surprise, it popped up right at the top.

But there was zero information available. Everything was empty except the name, indicating that the person exists.

When he clicked on it, a warning screen suddenly popped up.

"Access denied. Please input a higher access key before trying to access it again... Huh, they really kept my information safer than I thought."

With his curiosity fulfilled, he quickly closed all the pages before going back to the original interface at the very start.

"What was I looking for... Right, the unemployment data."

After typing several keywords into the search engine in the center, several raw data points of the unemployment statistics popped up.

"Geez, this is a lot more forward than I had imagined..."

Unable to read the raw data sheets, Xiaoyun clicked on the filter and selected only curated files that were already processed.

"Here it is... Now this is the gold mine I was looking for."

Seeing the first-hand report from the individual cities rather than as a whole, he could instantly notice the drastic differences.

Guangzhou was suffering from skyrocketing unemployment, with almost 1 in every 4 people being unemployed compared to Foshan's 1 in 8.

The lowest unemployment rate was surprisingly not in Luoping. Rather, it was Qingyuan, with only 1 in 1000 people being unemployed.

In contrast, Luoping has 1 in 20. A much higher number than Xiaoyun had imagined, as the streets every day didn't have any beggars or people looking for work.

Moving onto the next page, he was a little surprised to see a little note that stated a new formula had been specially applied to Luoping.

It excluded families and spouses of soldiers, drastically lowering the unemployment rate compared to before, to 1 in 50 people.

Scrolling down, the new formula is applied to other cities as well. Most cities had only very minimal decreases in unemployment.

Guangzhou changed from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6 people, with Foshan and Qingyuan remaining the same as before.

"Why did they apply this formula... Does the soldier really earn that much to offset family members needing to work?"

Going to the third page, he could finally see that the reasoning behind the change matched exactly what he had imagined.

The soldier's salary was more than a family needed to survive and even live in relative luxury, even for a family of five with an elderly person.

Yet, oddly enough, even if the wife or the husband were fully capable of working and didn't have a kid, they would rather stay home than work for extra money.

Reading all the notes only raised more questions in Xiaoyun's mind as she couldn't understand why the new formula was so effective in Luoping.

Curious, he quickly switched back to the front interface, going all the way to the search engine.

"Spouses and Families of soldiers... Here it is. And just filter out the ones that have a job."

After putting everything in place, a bunch of files that contained raw data popped up, all showing lists of personal information of people close to the soldiers.

"Is there not a single one that is curated... Here it is."

After finding a file that was compiled back in April, he was a little surprised to see the topic and legends chart all matching exactly what he was looking for.

The first chart showed the number of soldiers' family members living in different cities under their control. Overwhelmingly, around 85% of them live in Luoping, with 15% in Guangzhou and 4% in Foshan, leaving Qingyuan with less than 1%.

The next chart just so happens to be a survey of a sample of five thousand people, all separated into different categories.

They were all asked a single question: why did they stop working, or choose not to work when given the chance?

Half of them were in the expected answer of simply not wanting to work. They simply had more money than they could spend.

The other half was the sticky issue, where their education and work experience don't match the available job market at all.

From marine biology to anthropology to Literature, he could already imagine them saying they are unwilling to work for low wages or work in a blue-collar setting.

The second survey, asking soldiers' families who actually have a job, reinforced his theory, as all of their jobs are either civil engineering or white collar jobs.

"Time to note this down... Wait a moment."

As Xiaoyun created a notebook and pen, he suddenly realized the research he was doing was completely off focus.

The real systemic unemployment wasn't soldiers' spouses or their family members. But rather the general population that doesn't have a soldier's income to support themselves.

"Why did I look at this? Am I stupid?"

After only noting a few things down, he quickly returned to the main interface, looking for surveys conducted that were related to unemployment.

Hundreds of them instantly popped up once again. But the majority of them were either small sample sizes or raw data that had been discarded.

Digging through all the different filters and picking for later time-frames, Xiaoyun soon finally found the perfect survey he had been looking for.

"Unemployment question between March and April in Guangzhou... What a perfect survey topic."

Opening the survey file, he was a little surprised to see a hyperlink right above ten different citations in the top-right corner.

"Survey conducted at Deputy Governor's Request... No wonder it perfectly matched with the thing I'm looking for."

The moment he clicked on the link, he was instantly brought into a detailed plan, an unemployment strategy made by none other than Yuqi.

"Time to see what she had done so far."