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[CriticallyAshamed]

None. All non skill dwarves do the butchery/tanning/extracting/furnace operating/hauling/walling/furnituring. Usually I pick random individuals from the peasant pool and bless them with an apprenticeship into a skill that can use more workers (invariably cooking/brewing/bonecarving/engraving in my fortresses). If they run out of butchery, we aren't designating enough puppies for slaughter. If we run out of stone to haul, the miners aren't digging enough.

Albeit this leads to tragedy when I actually need something done now if not sooner.

[Larix]

In a 'grown' fort, i like to have 5-10% of the adult population idling. That means there's a lot of work going on and urgent new jobs will be picked up and get done without delay. If the idler ratio is higher than that, i'm not busy enough, if it's lower, stuff will end up not getting done on time and hauling backlogs will build up.

I regularly play with fairly small numbers of dwarfs and find a lack of dwarfpower much more of a problem than idlers. With too many idlers, i can easily produce more jobs for them to take. But if i have too few workers and every job takes forever to finish because no-one's free is really nerve-grating.

[Mimodo]

Reading through this, I have discovered that I am an extremely cruel overlord! 189 population, and I'm pissed off at that 1 idler... and that guy is my vampire chained to a post convicted of five murders! Having lazy good for nothing layabouts is not what my fortress is about. If you don't look like you're good for a job, then you'd better pick up a sword and hope like hell you're good at it by the next goblin ambush.

How do I keep 189 dwarves busy? Well, that's one of the advantages of an extremely inefficient fort Yeah, it's all very well and good making everything turn out quickly, with as few dwarves as possible... But I probably push out the same amount of produce, the difference is, I don't have lazy dwarves throwing parties and distracting the important dwarves from making me pretty shiny stuffs.

No idlers also means no friendships, which is also a big positive for keeping a happy fortress, especially when you've killed almost as many dwarves as you currently have (I don't know why they keep coming, I honestly don't). Unfortunately, you still get unhappy dwarves from death because I swear, every single f*@&ing migrant is related to each other. It requires more "Shiny" ways of keeping them happy at this point. Generally with them all working hard, there's a chance they'll get more happy thoughts. They move around the fortress more, and see more things (the platinum staircase is great for my noble, the rose gold bridge keeps about 5% of my military happy, the silver roads keep others happy, the masterwork statues are great for those coming in and out of the entrance.......)

[JerBear]

with a lavishly furnitured dinning room, a zoo, statue garden (my courtyard)
2x3 / 3x5 / 5x8 bedrooms (engraved) with masterwork bed, cabinet and chest
a clothing industry turning out more cloak/trouser/socks faster than they can sort and dump
and an alcohol industry with all kinds of different drinks on rotation.
almost everyone is on Ecstatic (except the peasants that get the 1x2 rooms with only a cabinet)

when everyone is THAT happy... they won't care if someone went missing once in a while for "changing bedsheets down in the dungeon"

[Margrave]

Any idle Dwarf gets put on the firing line.

...I mean gets handed a crossbow and and bolts and practices shooting. There's always an occaision that I'll need an overwhelming amount of firepower to put it down. And in the rare case a sneaker gets past the leashed dogs, leashed war bears and leashed children then they'll be zoned in on nearby shooters.

[Matoro]

For a few first years (before population is +100), I'll try to make sure there is no idlers. If I see someone not having anything to do, I quickly order him to clean some room from the stones or make him jeweler to cut the gems or something like that. Idlers are annoying. They eat and drink. They make friends and make tantrum spirals worse. They are the bane of the dwarven society.

[Loud Whispers]

Nought idlers.

Inefficiency will not be tolerated.

[DrTaco]

I typically have a ratio for two idlers for every dwarf that is busy. So in a fort of ~90 dwarves, 60 are throwing a party in the massive dining hall, and 30 are doing odd jobs like farming and mining. Yea, i am horribly inefficient.

[wierd]

I find it important to draw a distinction between "idlers", (dwarves currently without a job) and "party animals", (dwarves who routinely do nothing except aggregate in the dining hall, forming dangerous friendships. Dwarves don't let dwarves make friends.)

Idlers are fine. Party animals destroy fortresses.

Keeping the former from becoming the latter, especially with what are essentially proletariots thrown in (fish cleaners, millers, etc-- that only work "ocasionally") can be quite challenging.

Burrows help, since you can keep a single "prole" in each burrow, and keep those idle hands from being the devil's plaything that way, but they aren't perfect either. (Some have to be outside burrow restrictions, and the can make the dreaded friendship tree branch between burrows. This is because you need some dwarves to move goods between burrows, or from outside the fortress, to the inside. Minecarts only do so much.)

Children are the bane of my gameplay experience, because they are almost always, without exception, party animals, and undermine the fortress' morale.  Children that aren't locked up into maturation booths are 5th columnists for the goblin army, and need to be contained until they mature enough to understand that they need to work, and need to stay in their burrows.

Idlers are fine. Party animals cannot be permitted. Parties are only allowed as needed, to combat psychotic episodes after seeing the undead or something; and then only as private parties.

[Hetairos]

If the idler count goes into double digits I designate more work to do. The only dwarves allowed to idle for prolonged periods of time are the medics and the broker, since they need to be immediately available when the need arises. I have seen only a single party in the past 20 years of the existence of the fortress, and dwarves with rusty social skills are a common sight.

[Deepblade]

If you don't like parties so much you can just designate a meeting zone from the zone menu around the nice looking stuff. No parties at all occur like that.

[callisto8413]

If more than one fourth of my citizens are idle I check the 'u'nit screen and find out who is it.  Five miners doing nothing - need more digging.  Four woodcutters all idle - cut down more trees.  So on, so forth.  But if some don't idle they don't make friends, marry, have kids, and develop social skills.  That is why you build a Grand Hall, for meetings, parties, large dinners, and to allow them to enjoy life for a tad.  Before the goblins come and burn the landscape, and the elves come and complain about the lack of trees, and the trolls show up and kill their pet dog, and the giant tiger comes and eats their kid in front of them.  You know...fun?

[Mr S]

And, really, don't you NEED a few idlers in your dining room at any given time for the puppy shower to have any chance of giving hardened emotions?

[sculleywr]

Well, with the project of separating the cavern into floors and smoothing all walls in the fort (because I can, that's why!), I only have 5 idlers out of my 121 dorfs. meanwhile, three vile forces of darkness have shown up, just to run screaming when my military poked their heads out of the fort entrance. I haven't gotten so much as a kill in the last three sieges. Neither dorf nor goblin, nor human (my civilization is at war with humans, for some reason.

[Veskulios]

I hate seeing idlers, however with a fort of 220 dwarfs it's really hard to keep everyone busy