# How to decide the hiring headcount for a retail department

The job responsibility is exactly the same in the department.

The department has a total number of working hours required. The total retention is about 50% a year, and the hiring cost is about $2000 per person. Salary is about$12 per hour. Full time works 40 hours, while part time works 20 hours per week.

Is this an optimization or simulation problem? I guess the output is a range of workers required. How to model this?

• As Oguz says, more details are required. In particular, you need to specify what decisions you (as manager of the department) need to make, and what criterion (cost?) you are using to evaluate decisions. Then you need get into assumptions (e.g., known labor demand) and parameters (e.g., hiring costs, wages, ...). Sep 30 '19 at 20:11
• As others have said: It's not really clear whether you are asking "is this optimization or simulation?" or "how do I model this problem?" or "what is the optimal headcount for this specific instance?" Sep 30 '19 at 23:09