Question

An employee is scheduled to work 40 hours per week at a base rate of $18.50 per hour. In addition to the 40 scheduled hours, the employee is asked to work 8 hours of overtime for one week due to staffing shortages. If overtime is paid at a rate of 1.5 times the base rate, how much will the employee earn for the week? (use $xxx.Xx format)

Answer 1

$962.00

Explanation:

We can start from the first sentence of the word problem and work from there.

First, the employee is working for 40 hours at $18.50 per hour. This means that for each hour, the employee is gaining $18.50 . This can be represented as $18.50 * 40 = $740 for their base pay.

Next, the employee works 8 hours of overtime at 1.5 * base pay (18.50). For each hour of overtime they work, they earn 1.5 * 18.50 = $27.75 dollars. Their earnings from overtime work for the week can be represented as

8 * 27.75 = $222

Because all the employee's hours are encompassed in overtime and base pay, we can add the two together to get

740 + 222 = $962.00 for their total pay for the week