Employees named David and Sarah more likely to earn higher salaries

Something for the weekend: Employees named David and Sarah are more likely to earn the most, according to research by Furniture At Work.

The furniture supplier used LinkedIn data to determine the highest-paying vacancies and the most popular names for people in those roles.

It looked at job titles most frequently advertised with a starting salary of more than £100,000, the average salary for the top 10 job titles according to Indeed, and the most popular men’s and women’s names in the UK to find the five most common names for each gender. LinkedIn’s filtered search was then used to see how many people with each name held these job titles.

Of the top 10 highest-paying positions, David was the most frequent men’s name on the list, with seven appearances, while Sarah was the most common women’s name for eight of the highest-earning job titles.

Meanwhile, men named David were the most likely to earn up to £113,472 as tax partners, and women named Karen have this role more than any other female name.

The top five names that earn the highest salaries are:

1. David
2. Sarah
3. John
4. Karen
5. Andrew

The top-paying vacancies, their average salaries and the most popular names in the profession are:

1. Tax partner - £113,472 – David and Karen
2. Chief financial officer - £107,608 – David and Sarah
3. Consultant psychiatrist - £99,731 – Andrew and Sarah
4. Quantitative developer - £91,011 – Paul, Elizabeth and Julie
5. Director - £82,206 – David and Sarah
6. GP or physician - £81,526 – David and Sarah
7. Operations director - £79,688 – David, John and Sarah
8. Data engineer - £55,056 – David and Sarah
9. Software engineer - £49,501 – David and Sarah
10. Legal consultant - £49,230 – John and Sarah

Mike Philp, chief executive officer of Furniture At Work, said: “The results of the findings are really interesting, with historically popular names, David and Sarah, taking the top spots in some of the highest paid positions around the country. As the trends in names continue to change with each generation, the names of future bosses can be expected to swap to less traditional names.”

While this is lucky for anyone whose name or role is mentioned in either of the lists above, it also offers food for thought for expectant parents!