A town's total allowance for firefighter's wages and benefits in a new budget is $600,000. If wages are calculated at $40,000 per firefighter and benefits at $20,000 per firefighter, write an equation whose solution is the number of firefighters the town can employ if they spend their whole budget. Let x represent the number of fire fighters they higher.

Question

(1 point)
Responses

60,000x = 600,000
60,000x = 600,000

40,000x +20,000 = 600,000
40,000x +20,000 = 600,000

20,000x+40,000=600,000
20,000x+40,000=600,000

40,000x-20,000=600,000

Answer 1

To create an equation representing the total cost of wages and benefits for the firefighters, we need to consider both components:

• Wages: $40,000 per firefighter
• Benefits: $20,000 per firefighter

The total cost for one firefighter is \( 40,000 + 20,000 = 60,000 \) dollars.

If \( x \) represents the number of firefighters, the total cost for \( x \) firefighters would be \( 60,000x \).

Thus, to find out how many firefighters they can hire with their budget of $600,000, we can set up the following equation:

\[ 60,000x = 600,000 \]

So the correct response is:

60,000x = 600,000