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1.8 A) Hourly Wages – Part 1
1.8 A) Hourly Wages – Part 1
It is likely that some of the questions in the exam will be financial based. There are a variety of different financial based questions that you may be asked, and they are all explored in this section and the following sections.
Let’s start by looking at wages and salaries.
Let’s start by looking at wages and salaries.
Hourly Wages & Salaries
This is a very useful section especially when you head into the world of work. Before you work for a company you will want to know how much you are going to get paid. There are many different types of wages in the real world, but the main 2 are hourly and salary.
Hourly wages are the amount of money that you are paid for 1 hour of work. In the UK and many places across the world, we have what is known as a minimum wage. This is the lowest amount of money that an individual is paid in exchange for one hour of work.
A salary is a fixed and regular payment that is typically paid on a monthly basis, but it is often expressed as an annual sum. Salaries are usually paid to higher skilled individuals (most of your teachers will be on a salary).
This is a very useful section especially when you head into the world of work. Before you work for a company you will want to know how much you are going to get paid. There are many different types of wages in the real world, but the main 2 are hourly and salary.
Hourly wages are the amount of money that you are paid for 1 hour of work. In the UK and many places across the world, we have what is known as a minimum wage. This is the lowest amount of money that an individual is paid in exchange for one hour of work.
A salary is a fixed and regular payment that is typically paid on a monthly basis, but it is often expressed as an annual sum. Salaries are usually paid to higher skilled individuals (most of your teachers will be on a salary).
Hourly Wages
A common exam question will give you the hourly wage and ask you to work out how much an individual earns for working a certain number of hours. In order to work this out, we multiply the number of hours worked by the hourly wage.
A common exam question will give you the hourly wage and ask you to work out how much an individual earns for working a certain number of hours. In order to work this out, we multiply the number of hours worked by the hourly wage.
Example 1
An individual gets paid £4.50 per hour and they work an 8-hour shift. How much do they get paid for the 8-hour shift?
To find out how much they gets paid, we use the formula and sub in 8 for the hours worked and £4.50 for the hourly wage.
An individual gets paid £4.50 per hour and they work an 8-hour shift. How much do they get paid for the 8-hour shift?
To find out how much they gets paid, we use the formula and sub in 8 for the hours worked and £4.50 for the hourly wage.
For the 8-hour shift, our individual gets £36.40. We are working with money and this means that we need to make sure that we give all of our answers to 2 decimal places (if they are not an integer – whole number). If you would have used a calculator for this question, we would have got the answer 36.4, which we would have had to add a zero on the end to ensure that the answer has two decimal places.
Example 2
These questions are fairly straightforward because it is just a case of subbing the number of hours worked and the hourly wage into a formula. However, these types of questions can become harder when we are given the hours worked in minutes or the time that an individual starts their shift and ends their shift.
I work at a local shop and get paid £7.20 per hour.
A) How much would I get paid if I worked for 255 minutes?
B) How much would I get paid if I started working at 1:20 and finished working at 8:50?
Part A
Part A asks us to work out how much I get paid for working 255 minutes. We are told at the start of the question that I get paid £7.20 per hour. At the moment we have two different units; the length of time that I work is given in minutes and my rate of pay is in hours. Therefore, the first step in answering this question is to get both of these into the same unit. It is easier to get both of the units into hours. This means that I need to convert 255 minutes into hours. There are 60 minutes in an hour, which means that we can convert 255 minutes into hours by dividing by 60.
These questions are fairly straightforward because it is just a case of subbing the number of hours worked and the hourly wage into a formula. However, these types of questions can become harder when we are given the hours worked in minutes or the time that an individual starts their shift and ends their shift.
I work at a local shop and get paid £7.20 per hour.
A) How much would I get paid if I worked for 255 minutes?
B) How much would I get paid if I started working at 1:20 and finished working at 8:50?
Part A
Part A asks us to work out how much I get paid for working 255 minutes. We are told at the start of the question that I get paid £7.20 per hour. At the moment we have two different units; the length of time that I work is given in minutes and my rate of pay is in hours. Therefore, the first step in answering this question is to get both of these into the same unit. It is easier to get both of the units into hours. This means that I need to convert 255 minutes into hours. There are 60 minutes in an hour, which means that we can convert 255 minutes into hours by dividing by 60.
We can see that I work for 4.25 hours. The next step is to sub the hours worked (4.25) and rate of pay per hour (£7.20) into the formula.
Therefore, the answer for this question is £30.60.
Part B
In part B, we are told when the individual starts and ends their shift. From this information, we are able to work out the number of hours worked. You may find it easier to draw a time line to see how long they have worked for.
Part B
In part B, we are told when the individual starts and ends their shift. From this information, we are able to work out the number of hours worked. You may find it easier to draw a time line to see how long they have worked for.
They started their shift at 1:20. The first step in working out the number of hours is to get as many full hours in as possible; we count in 20 mins past the hour until the next hour would put us at a time that is past 8:50 – we start with 2:20, then 3:20, then 4:20 … until we get to 8:20 (the next hour would put us at 9:20, which is past the end time of 8:50). 1:20 to 8:20 is 7 hours.
We now need to work out how long it is from 8:20 to 8:50, which is 30 minutes.
It is easier to keep our unit of time in hours, which means that we should change 30 minutes to hours, and this gives us half an hour (0.5 hours). Therefore, the total amount of hours that the individual spent working is 7.5 hours. The next step is to sub the number of hours (7.5) and the hourly wage (£7.20) into the formula.
So, for working a shift that starts at 1:20 and ends at 8:50, the individual get paid £54.
As the answer is a whole number, I do not need to have any decimal places; money answers can have none or 2 decimal places (you can never give money answers to 1 or more than 2 decimal places).
As the answer is a whole number, I do not need to have any decimal places; money answers can have none or 2 decimal places (you can never give money answers to 1 or more than 2 decimal places).