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A factory has 500 workers

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by BlueDragon2010 » Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:43 am
A factory has 500 workers, 15 percent of whom are women. If 50 additional workers are to be hired and all of the present workers remain, how many of the additional workers must be women in order to raise the percent of women employees to 20 percent?

A) 3

B) 10

C) 25

D) 30

E) 35
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:50 am
BlueDragon2010 wrote:A factory has 500 workers, 15 percent of whom are women. If 50 additional workers are to be hired and all of the present workers remain, how many of the additional workers must be women in order to raise the percent of women employees to 20 percent?

A) 3
B) 10
C) 25
D) 30
E) 35
A factory has 500 workers, 15 percent of whom are women
15% of 500 = 75
So, there are presently 75 women at the factory


Once the additional 50 workers are hired, there will be 550 workers.
We want 20% of those 550 workers to be women.
20% of 550 = 110, so we need there to be 110 women altogether.

So, we need to increase the number of female workers from 75 to 110.
110 - 75 = 35

So, 35 of the additional workers must be women.

Answer: E

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by Patrick_GMATFix » Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:55 am
We could take an algebraic approach, try out numbers from the answer choices, or just think through logically.

Logically: there will be 550 workers. We'll want 20% of them (or 110) to be women. There are currently 15%*500 = 75 women. The additional number of women must therefore be 110-75 = 35. The full solution below is taken from the GMATFix App.

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by Abhishek009 » Wed Feb 19, 2014 8:51 am
BlueDragon2010 wrote:A factory has 500 workers, 15 percent of whom are women. If 50 additional workers are to be hired and all of the present workers remain, how many of the additional workers must be women in order to raise the percent of women employees to 20 percent?
Presently -

Women - 75

Men - 425

The factory is planning Increase in Workforce to the existing strength by 50 Persons , hence total Population will be 550 Persons.

Women will be 20% or 1/5th of 550 = 110 Women

Men Will be 440


So , additional women to be hired will be 110 - 75 = 35 additional women workers.
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by Jeff@TargetTestPrep » Sat Jun 27, 2015 5:29 am
BlueDragon2010 wrote:A factory has 500 workers, 15 percent of whom are women. If 50 additional workers are to be hired and all of the present workers remain, how many of the additional workers must be women in order to raise the percent of women employees to 20 percent?

A) 3

B) 10

C) 25

D) 30

E) 35
Solution:

Let's first determine the number of women currently working at the factory. We know that there are 500 workers, and 15% of them are women. Thus, we know there are:

500 x 0.15 = 75 women

We are asked, if 50 additional workers are to be hired and all of the present workers remain, how many of the additional workers must be women in order to raise the percent of women employees to 20 percent? To translate this idea into a mathematical statement, we have:

(Number of women after hire)/(total workers after hire) = 20%

To solve this statement, we can set up the actual equation with the numbers given from the question stem, and we can let w be the number of additional women hired:

(75 + w)/(500 + 50) = 20%

(75 + w)/550 = 0.2

75 + w = 550 x 0.2

75 + w = 110

w = 35

Answer:E

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