Question

Last month Grace worked, and was paid for, a total of x hours. Some of the hours were on the day shift and the remainder of the hours were on the night shift. Her hourly pay is 20% higher for the night shift than for the day shift. How many hours did Grace work on the day shift last month

Answer 1

Say her hourly pay was $p for the day shift and $1.2p for the night shift.

(1) x = 55. Clearly insufficient: we need to know how these 55 hours are split between the day shift hours and the night shift hour.

(2) Grace's gross pay for the hours she worked on day shift last month was exactly 50% of her total gross pay for last month. Not sufficient.

(1)+(2) Say Grace worked h hours on the day shift and 55-h hours on the night shift. Thus, her pay for the the hours she worked on day shift is $ph and the total gross pay is $ph+(55-h)*1.2p. From (2) we have that ph=0.5(ph+(55-h)*1.2p) --> reduce by p: h=0.5(h+(55-h)*1.2). We have 1 variable, so we can solve for it. Sufficient.

Answer: C.