Question

Heavy equipment operators gets paid $129 per day and general laborers get paid $85 per day. If thirty one people were hired and the payroll was $3339, how many equipment operators were employed and how many laborers ?

Answer 1

For this case we can set up the following system of equations:

x+ y= 31 (1)

129x + 85y= 3339 (2)

x= number of operators

y= number of laborers

We can solve for x from the first equation and we got:

x= 31-y (3)

We can replace into the second equation and we got:

129(31-y) + 85y = 3339

Solving for y we got:

3999- 129y +85y = 3339

3999-3339= 129y-85y

660 = 44y

y= 660/44= 15

Solving for x we got:

x= 31-15= 16

Then we have:

16 operators and 15 laborers