6. Wages, Pay, Commission, and Work Rates

Money rates often use dollars per hour, dollars per item, or percent commission. For hourly wages:
\[ \text{total pay}=\text{hourly rate}\times\text{hours}. \]

Example: A worker earns 14 dollars per hour for 22 hours.
\[ 14(22)=308\text{ dollars}. \]

If total pay and hours are known, divide to find hourly rate:
\[ \frac{96\text{ dollars}}{8\text{ hours}}=12\text{ dollars per hour}. \]

Work rate measures output per time: pages per hour, forms per day, lawns per week.

Case study - two workers: Ava types 8 pages per hour. Ben types 5 pages per hour. Together, if they can work independently on different pages, their combined rate is
\[ 8+5=13\text{ pages per hour}. \]
In 3 hours, they type \(13(3)=39\) pages.

Common mistake: comparing total output without time. Typing 24 pages sounds better than 20 pages, but 24 pages in 6 hours is slower than 20 pages in 2 hours.