richachampion wrote:Yorco and Zortech are two corporations that employ large numbers of full-time workers who are paid by the hour. Publicly available records indicate that Yorco employs roughly the same number of such hourly wage workers as Zortech does but spends a fairly higher total sum per year on wages for such workers. Therefore, hourly wages must be higher, on average, at Yorco than at Zortech, since _____.

A. Zortech spends a higher total sum per year than Yorco does to provide its hourly wage workers with benefits other than wages
B. the work performed by hourly wage workers at Zortech does not require a significantly higher level of skill than the work performed by hourly wage workers at Yorco does
C. the proportion of all company employees who are hourly wage workers is significantly greater at Yorco than it is at Zortech
D. overtime work, which is paid at a substantially higher rate than work done during the regular work week, is rare at both Yorco and Zortech
E. the highest hourly wages paid at Yorco are higher than the highest hourly wages paid at Zortech

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

richachampion wrote:Yorco and Zortech are two corporations that employ large numbers of full-time workers who are paid by the hour. Publicly available records indicate that Yorco employs roughly the same number of such hourly wage workers as Zortech does but spends a fairly higher total sum per year on wages for such workers. Therefore, hourly wages must be higher, on average, at Yorco than at Zortech, since _____.

A. Zortech spends a higher total sum per year than Yorco does to provide its hourly wage workers with benefits other than wages
B. the work performed by hourly wage workers at Zortech does not require a significantly higher level of skill than the work performed by hourly wage workers at Yorco does
C. the proportion of all company employees who are hourly wage workers is significantly greater at Yorco than it is at Zortech
D. overtime work, which is paid at a substantially higher rate than work done during the regular work week, is rare at both Yorco and Zortech
E. the highest hourly wages paid at Yorco are higher than the highest hourly wages paid at Zortech

Conclusion: hourly wages must be higher, on average, at Yorco.
Premise: Yorco employs the same number of hourly wage workers as Zortech, but spends a greater total on wages per year for these workers.

Well, if Yorco employs the same number of workers, but is paying those workers more, in aggregate, the two most likely explanations that come to mind are 1) these workers receive a higher hourly wage or 2) these workers are working more hours. '1' is the argument's conclusion. And if we want to strengthen the conclusion, we'd want verification that '2' is not the case.

This is what D gives us. If overtime hours are rare, then it seems likely that Yorco workers are not working significantly more hours than workers at Zortech. Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that workers at Yorco do, in fact, receive a greater hourly wage. (Note that if Yorco workers did work many overtime hours, and overtime pay is higher, then we'd have a pretty good alternative explanation to the one given by the argument.)

1. In general, can there be any situation in which two companies have different REGULAR work-hours even if there is NO "overtime work" as such ? I mean, can we (realistically) consider that Y has 10 REGULAR work-hours and Z has 8 REGULAR work-hours as the standard that these two companies follow ?

2. As for Option E: Higher "highest hourly wages" at Yorco doesn't necessarily mean that average will be higher at Yorco because we need to know what proportion of hourly wage workers get this higher "highest hourly wages" at Yorco in order to conclude about the AVERAGE hourly wages! Right ?

Thus, simply knowing higher "highest hourly wages" at Yorco doesn't shed any light on the AVERAGE hourly wages at Yorco. Am I correct ?

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

1. In general, can there be any situation in which two companies have different REGULAR work-hours even if there is NO "overtime work" as such ? I mean, can we (realistically) consider that Y has 10 REGULAR work-hours and Z has 8 REGULAR work-hours as the standard that these two companies follow ?

An excellent question. Generally speaking, the thing we want to be on the lookout for is a language shift between categories, rather than a situation when a category is defined differently in two different scenarios. In other words, when see the phrase "regular work hours" our first thought should be "what about non-regular work hours?"

(Offhand, I recall another question in which we were given info about major crimes, and the answer involved info about minor crimes.)

That said, it's not impossible that regular work hours could be defined differently for two different companies in the context of a GMAT question. My rule-of-thumb is to let the question-writer steer me. So when I'm reading this prompt, I"m making the reasonable assumption that "regular work hours" means the same thing for these two companies, while recognizing that should an answer choice say something to the effect of "regular working hours are defined this way for company x and this way for company y," I'll need to double-back and reassess the validity of that assumption.