Question

an employment agency specializing in temporary construction help pays heavy equipment operators $129 per day and general laborers $100 per day. If thirty-two people were hired and the payroll was $3751, how many heavy equipment operators were employed? How many laborers?

Answer 1

To solve this problem you must apply the proccedure shown below:

1. Let's call $x$ to the number of equipment operators and $y$ to the numbers of laborers.

2. Based on the information given in the problem above, you can make a system of equation, as following:

$\left \{ {{129x+100y=3751} \atop {x+y=32}} \right.$

3. By applying the method of substitution, you can solve for $x$ from the second equation and substitute it into the first equation to solve for $y$, as following:

$x=32-y\\ 129(32-y)+100y=3751\\ y=\frac{-377}{-29} \\ y=13$

4. Now, substitute the value of $y$ into the second equation to calculate $x$:

$x=32-13\\ x=19$

The answer is: 19 equipment operators and 13 laborers.