Shawn earns $3.50 per hour for the first 40 hours worked in a week and $20.25 per week, for hours over 40. If he earns $661.50 in one week, how many hours did he work?
You appear to have a typo
You must have meant:
$20.25 per hour for overtime.
normal weekly wage
= 40(3.50)
= 140
leaving 661.50-140 or $521.50 for overtime.
overtime hours = 521.5/20.25 = 25.75
So he worked 40 + 25.75
or 65.75 hours.
strange question: very huge gap between regular rate and overtime rate
To find out how many hours Shawn worked, we need to break down his earnings based on the different rates.
Let's start by calculating his earnings for the first 40 hours at a rate of $3.50 per hour. We can multiply the rate by the number of hours:
40 hours * $3.50/hour = $140
Next, we need to calculate the additional earnings for the hours worked over 40. The total earnings for the week is $661.50, and we already accounted for $140, so the remaining amount is:
$661.50 - $140 = $521.50
Now we need to determine how many hours these additional earnings represent at a rate of $20.25 per hour. We can do this by dividing the earnings by the rate:
$521.50 / $20.25/hour ≈ 25.741 hours
Since we can't have partial hours, we can round this to the nearest whole number. In this case, Shawn would have worked approximately 26 additional hours.
To find the total number of hours worked, we add the hours for the first 40 hours with the additional hours:
40 hours + 26 hours = 66 hours
Therefore, Shawn worked approximately 66 hours in one week.