Question

In 1980, about 2,180,000 U.S. workers worked at home. During the next ten years, the number of workers working at home increased by5% per year. Based on this information, how many Americans were working at home in 1990?

Answer 1

In order to calculate the number of Americans in 1990, we can use the following equation for exponential growth:

$P=P_0(1+i)^t$

Where P is the final value after t years, P0 is the initial value and i is the growth rate per year.

So, using P0 = 2180000, i = 5% = 0.05 and t = 10, we have:

$\begin{gathered} P=2180000(1.05)^{10} \\ P=3550990 \end{gathered}$

So the number of Americans in 1990 were 3,550,990.