It's very unrealistic to assume that all of a world's population is going to drop what they're doing and go work on one specific project. The scientists aren't going to drop their micrometers to go man the production line, and the engineers aren't going to abandon the production line to go pick up micrometers just because the world only revolves around one item of interest at a time. After giving us four nice distinct worker castes they ruin any distinction with the all-or-nothing approach to economic modeling.
The way it should work is each group of workers does it's own unique thing. Engineers produce, scientists research, security keeps things secure, and the navy protects the planet. Each group should be able to do it's own distinct thing at the same time. Only scientists should be allowed to research and they should be able to research even if the engineers are producing something at the same time. Security always gets to do security no matter what the world is doing at the time, and the navy protects regardless of what the world is doing at the time, so why not allow scientists and engimeers to do their own thing regardless of what the world is doing?
I think a truly great opportunity was missed here to make the game more realistic and challenging by allowing worlds to not multitask (geez I mean isn't that the big busines thing now - multitasking?). It would really give the proper meaning to having distinct worker groups with different functions and would allow for easier production and research early on in the game when you're stuck in the atomic age with one world only. I sure hope this can be corrected to make the game better.
Eric Larsen