The Foster Insurance Company developed standard times for processing claims. When a claim was received at the processing center, it was first reviewed and classified as simple or complex. The standard time for processing was:

Simple claim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 minutes

Complex claim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25 hours

Employees were expected to be productive 7.5 hours per day. Compensation costs were $135 per day per employee. During July, which had 20 working days, the following number of claims were processed:

Simple claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 processed

Complex claims. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960 processed

Required:

a. Calculate the number of workers that should have been available to process July claims.

b. Assume that 23 workers were actually available throughout the month of July.

Calculate a labor efficiency variance expressed as both a number of workers and a dollar amount for the month.