Disclaimer I like FP2 for what it is, and the gameplay is incredible in my opinion. I also love that 11bit tried expanding the universe/scope rather than making the same game and slapping '2' on the title like every other franchise. I am not saying this to make FP2 more like FP1.

Why workforce feels impersonal and 'boring'

In FP1 you had engineers that worked in factories and medical posts but in FP2, anyone can be anything, so none of it matters. Assigning child labour actually meant that you would get more workforce but at the cost of their possible deaths, or having child helpers had a subtext of educating the youth into future engineers etc.

Workforce and education feel impersonal because people are reduced almost entirely to numbers.

Education feels unexplored currently

I wish that "mandatory schools" law had one more expansion into universities — so your people could pay heatstamps to go into university, creating engineers at a slower pace, or maybe you could make them free for everyone and generate more engineers. It could also combine with at home vs schools laws to affect how the engineers are.

This would segment the workforce and bring more personality to the characters. Yes we do have teaching hospitals but that's currently it, it's again, not like a realised opportunity but the same event of having students watch/experiment or not.

Bringing meaning to population numbers

This would be harder to implement but if FP2 had kids that grew up or new ones that were born, it would be much better.

There could be an extreme start option and you have to put women into work on something that can affect fertility, or again, maybe you had to put kids back to mines at the cost of engineers/doctors for a challenge. Or an outbreak such as measles would actually feel like threatening the future.

The challenges in gameplay

The main goal would be to create your city and build it around the future. You wouldn't be able to build a ton of hospitals because you didn't prepare for plague tale before, you would have to actually think of it in advance or do it last second (likely with more deaths).

Same with if everyone is an engineer then who is going to do the labour work (if not chosen automaton laws) or how to adjust these numbers for colonies.

There are also an unexplored path of literacy and newspapers/books or things like arts majors to have people create goods at higher prices a la merit/equality that would be too long to go in depth here.

The issues with implementation

The first one is that it would need a whole system to be implemented, which is why I mentioned DLC in the title rather than an update.

It would also need a rehaul of factories (especially advanced), and other buildings for engineers/doctors.

The last problem, however, is the end-game and calculation. The game gets very heavy on load times and this would definitely add onto it.