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

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

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

GPT-4o mini · Answer

To find an equation representing the number of firefighters (x) the town can employ within the budget of $600,000, we need to account for both the wages and benefits of each firefighter.

The total cost for each firefighter combines wages and benefits:

Wages = $40,000 per firefighter
Benefits = $20,000 per firefighter

Thus, the total cost per firefighter is: \[ 40,000 + 20,000 = 60,000 \]

If we let $ x $ represent the number of firefighters, the total cost for $ x $ firefighters would be: \[ 60,000x \]

Now, we can set this equal to the budget: \[ 60,000x = 600,000 \]

Thus, the correct equation is: \[ 60,000x = 600,000 \]

So the response is: 60,000x = 600,000