Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Practice Test

If an employee's salary increases by 20%, how is this reflected in their new monthly salary?

1. Multiply by 1.2

2. Add 20

3. Multiply by 0.8

4. Subtract 20%

The correct answer is: Multiply by 1.2

To understand how a 20% salary increase affects an employee's new monthly salary, it is essential to consider what a percentage increase means in practical terms. When an employee receives a 20% pay raise, their new salary is calculated by taking their original salary and increasing it by 20% of that amount. To perform this calculation, you can express the increase as a multiplication factor. An increase of 20% can be represented as 1.20 when converting it to a multiplication factor. This means you take 100% of the original salary (which is represented as 1) and add the additional 20% (which is 0.20) together. As a result, to find the new salary after applying the 20% increase, you multiply the original salary by 1.2. This multiplication effectively incorporates the original amount plus the increase, accurately reflecting the new monthly salary after the raise. In contrast, the other choices would not result in the correct salary adjustment. Adding 20 would not account for the percentage increase properly, multiplying by 0.8 would decrease the salary rather than increase it, and subtracting 20% would also reduce the salary, rather than increasing it. Therefore, multiplying by 1