Worksheet Grade 9 Careers & CTE

From Job Posting to Paycheck: Water-Sector Wage Math

A grade 9 careers worksheet where students convert hourly wages to annual pay, compare operator pay percentiles, and choose the right quantity for each comparison.

Grade: Grade 9
Subject: Careers & CTE
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: Calculator

Standards

HSN-Q.A.2 Common Core Math

Define appropriate quantities for the purpose of descriptive modeling.

How this material aligns: Items 2 and 7 ask students to decide whether to model a job's pay as an hourly wage or an annual figure, defining the appropriate quantity before comparing as this standard requires.

All materials for HSN-Q.A.2 →

HSN-Q.A.1 Common Core Math

Use units as a way to understand problems and to guide the solution of multi-step problems; choose and interpret units consistently in formulas; choose and interpret the scale and the origin in graphs and data displays.

How this material aligns: Items 1, 8, and 9 carry dollar and hour units through multi-step wage conversions, choosing and interpreting units consistently across each calculation.

All materials for HSN-Q.A.1 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-17.

Objectives

Students will convert an hourly wage into annual pay and compare it to a stated median.
Students will choose whether hourly or annual pay is the right quantity for a given comparison.

Vocabulary

Key words: hourly wage, annual pay, median, percentile

Teacher overview

Reading a job posting and comparing its pay to a career average is a real skill, and it depends on comparing the same quantity on both sides. This worksheet has students convert hourly wages to annual pay and compare them against real operator pay data, where the median is $60,020 per year. A common mistake is comparing an hourly wage directly to an annual figure, which compares two different quantities; the fix is to convert first so both numbers describe the same span of time.

From Job Posting to Paycheck: Water-Sector Wage Math — Grade 9 Careers & CTE

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Devin is a fictional job seeker exploring pay in the water sector. Use these facts for every item.

Water and wastewater operators earn a median of $60,020 per year.
The 10th percentile earns about $39,110 per year; the 90th percentile earns over $91,060 per year.
A full-time year is 2,080 working hours.

One posting lists an hourly wage of $22 per hour. For a full-time year of 2,080 hours, find the annual pay.
To compare this posting with the operator median of $60,020 per year, should Devin compare hourly wages or annual pay? Explain why the quantity has to match on both sides.
How much less per year is the $22-per-hour job than the operator median of $60,020?
Operator pay ranges from about $39,110 at the 10th percentile to over $91,060 at the 90th percentile. Find the difference between those two figures.
Explain in one sentence what that difference tells Devin about how much operator pay can vary.
Suppose a licensing course and exam cost $500. Compared with the operator median of $60,020 per year, is that cost more or less than one percent of a year's pay? Show your work.
To decide whether the $500 course is worth it, is it more useful to compare $500 to a single paycheck or to a full year of pay? Explain your choice.
Suppose earning a higher license class raises Devin's annual pay from $45,760 to $52,000. How much more is that per year?
At the $22-per-hour rate, about how many hours would Devin need to work to earn back the $500 course cost?

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: $45,760 per year. $22 per hour x 2,080 hours = $45,760.
Answer: annual pay. The median is given per year, so Devin must convert the hourly wage to a yearly figure first; comparing an hourly number to a yearly number compares two different quantities.
Answer: $14,260 per year. $60,020 - $45,760 = $14,260.
Answer: $51,950. $91,060 - $39,110 = $51,950.
Answer: It shows operator pay varies widely, so experience, license class, and location can move an operator's pay far above or below the median.
Answer: less than one percent. $500 divided by $60,020 is about 0.0083, or roughly 0.8 percent, which is under one percent of a year's pay.
Answer: compare it to a full year of pay. The course is a one-time cost that pays off over the years of higher pay it can bring, so weighing it against a full year (or a career) is more informative than against a single paycheck.
Answer: $6,240 per year. $52,000 - $45,760 = $6,240.
Answer: about 23 hours. $500 divided by $22 per hour is about 22.7 hours, which rounds up to about 23 hours of work.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the annual-pay conversion for item 1 already set up (the hourly wage times 2,080 hours) and a printed reminder that a full-time year is 2,080 hours. Let students use a calculator for every item.

Extension

Ask students to find the hourly wage that would match the operator median of $60,020 per year for a 2,080-hour year, and to explain how they reversed the conversion.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "hourly wage," "annual pay," "median," and "percentile" with a simple number-line picture showing the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile pay. Provide a frame for item 2: "Devin should compare ___ because ___."