Using named cells in operations

In building an actual cost worksheet I have a list of employee names in one worksheet in column a and their rate of pay in column b. I name the cell that contains the rate of pay the employee's name.

Smith 35.86
Jones 41.20
Brown 32.12
Thomas 27.75
Johnson 33.00


so the cell that contains "35.86" is named "smith". Each week I build a report that shows actual labor costs in various phases of various projects. I have the employee's last name in a column and the hours spent on the task in the adjacent column. Is there a way to use the employee's name in Column A as one of the operands for multiplying.

A B C
Smith 20 Value in B * employee in A's rate of pay.
Jones 40
Brown 11
Thomas 32
Johnson 21


Is there a way to use the name in A as an operand without actually typing it in. Using cell references instead. Instead of typing in column C "=b1*smith"
Is there a way to use the value of "Smith" in column A and type something like "=A1*B1"?

You can use INDIRECT but it's Volatile

=B1*INDIRECT(A1)

It would however make a great deal more sense just to use VLOOKUP ... see XL Help

=B1*VLOOKUP(A1,yourlistrangeworksheet!A:B,2,0)

=indirect(a1) * b1