Two Job Offers: Pay After the Commute
Dana has two written job offers and one week to decide. Job A pays $16.00 per hour for a guaranteed 40-hour week, with time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours. It requires a 24-mile round trip five days a week; her car costs $0.25 per mile to run, and the lot charges $10 per week. Job B pays $17.00 per hour for a guaranteed 37.5-hour week with no overtime, but she can work from home three days a week; on the other two days the round trip is 30 miles, and parking is free. Both jobs offer identical benefits. Dana wants to compare them on take-home pay after commuting costs, and she is also weighing a $500 certification course she would pay for herself.
1. Compute each job's weekly pay after commuting costs. Which job is ahead, and by how much?
Read the worked answer
Job A
- Gross: 40 × $16.00 = $640.00
- Driving: 5 days × 24 mi = 120 mi × $0.25 = $30.00; plus $10 parking = $40.00
- Net: $640.00 − $40.00 = $600.00
Job B
- Gross: 37.5 × $17.00 = $637.50
- Driving: 2 days × 30 mi = 60 mi × $0.25 = $15.00; parking = $0
- Net: $637.50 − $15.00 = $622.50
Job B is ahead by $622.50 − $600.00 = $22.50 per week, even though it starts from fewer guaranteed hours. The lower headline rate at Job A is not the deciding number; the commute eats the difference.
2. How many weeks of that difference would it take to cover the $500 course, and what does the answer suggest about how much weight the pay gap deserves?
Read the worked answer
$500 ÷ $22.50 = 22.2 weeks, so 23 full weeks - roughly five months of paychecks.
Judgement: the gap is real but small (about $1,170 per year before taxes). It is smaller than one unpaid week of either job, and smaller than a single month of a benefit difference. So the decision should not rest on the $22.50 alone - schedule, whether the 40 hours are truly guaranteed, and how the overtime policy is actually applied in practice all matter more than the weekly gap.
3. Dana's contact at Job A says she could 'usually' get 6 hours of overtime a week. Recompute and evaluate how much that should influence her.
Read the worked answer
Overtime rate = 1.5 × $16.00 = $24.00/hr.
- Gross: $640 + (6 × $24) = $640 + $144 = $784
- Net after commuting: $784 − $40 = $744.00
- Edge over Job B: $744.00 − $622.50 = $121.50/week ≈ $6,318/year at 52 weeks
Judgement: that flips the ranking decisively - but only if the overtime is real. 'Usually' is not guaranteed, so it belongs on the upside of the ledger, not in the base budget. She should also notice the trade: 46 hours worked and five commute days versus 37.5 hours and two commutes. A defensible answer treats Job B's $622.50 as the floor, Job A's $744 as a possible ceiling, and asks the employer to put the overtime expectation in writing.