Hi Jocelyn!
Although Mark and Chris have shown you the fast ways to solve the problem, I'd like to show you the more thorough explanation.
For me personally, whenever I have a percent word problem, I like to perform the following steps:
- Start with my percent and put it over 100 (since all percentages can be put over 100)
- Label what the percent represents
- Label the numerator to the left of the percent the same thing as the percent
- Label your denominator an original or total
- Fill in information from the question matching the blanks
- Cross-multiply and divide
- Re-label your answer and make sure you found what the question wanted. **This is a very important step since some percent word problems are multi-step!**
So step 1 - start with the % and put it over 100 (you can drop the % sign)
23.8
------------------
100
Step 2 - label the % what it represents. (It doesn't have to be long)
23.8 one country's employees
------------------
100
Step 3 - label the numerator on the left the same as the percent
one country's employees 23.8 one country's employees
-------------------------------------------------------- = --------
100
Step 4 - label the denominator as an original or total
one country's employees 23.8 one country's employees
-------------------------------------------------------- = --------
total 100
Step 5 - fill in information from the question. Since the question says "18,900 employees in one country," then that means that the 18,900 can't possibly go in the denominator because it's not the total. 18,900 must go in the numerator. Therefore, the denominator must be "x"
one country's employees 18,900 23.8 one country's employees
-------------------------------------------------------- = --------
total x 100
Step 6 - cross multiply and divide. We multiply the diagonal that does not have "x" in it. The diagonal that does not have "x" is 18,900 * 100. Then we simply divide by the other number (23.8)
(18,900 * 100)/23.8 = 79,411.76 --->79,412
Step 7 - relabel your answer and make sure that you found what the question wanted.
The 79,412 was in the denominator, which was supposed to be people total. Is that what the question wants? Yes.
NOTE: If the question wanted us to find the employees that are in other countries, we could take the total we found and subtract out the 18,900. This is why labeling your percent, numerator, denominator, and answer help you keep track of what you are finding and what the question wants.
79,412 is the final answer.
