69,606 views
38 votes
38 votes
In 1980, about 2,180,000 U.S. workers worked at home. During the next ten years, the number of workers working at home increased by5% per year. Based on this information, how many Americans were working at home in 1990?

User Bernard Paulus
by
2.8k points

1 Answer

23 votes
23 votes

In order to calculate the number of Americans in 1990, we can use the following equation for exponential growth:


P=P_0(1+i)^t

Where P is the final value after t years, P0 is the initial value and i is the growth rate per year.

So, using P0 = 2180000, i = 5% = 0.05 and t = 10, we have:


\begin{gathered} P=2180000(1.05)^(10) \\ P=3550990 \end{gathered}

So the number of Americans in 1990 were 3,550,990.

User RedPixel
by
2.6k points