Equal Pay Day 2017: New tool reveals male names are worth more than female names

THE GENDER NAME GAP: MALE NAMES ARE WORTH UP TO £22,570 MORE THAN FEMALE NAMES

If you thought the gender pay gap didn’t impact every industry, you thought wrong; your name could be affecting your pay right now, as revealed by new insights following the launch of Adzuna’s ValueMyName tool. Ahead of Equal Pay Day this year, Adzuna have found that there is a gap of £22,570 between the highest earning male and female names. 

The Gender Name Gap

The first of it’s kind ‘ValueMyName’ tool reveals the average salaries that 1,200 names from origins all around the world earn and unsurprisingly for some, the top 316 are male names.

The highest earning name is ‘Ed’, topping the list with an average salary of £61,362, compared to the highest earning female name ‘Liz’, who earns an average salary of £38,792.  Shockingly, the first female name ranks at a sorry 317th place within the findings.

In stark contrast to the highest earners which are all male names, nine out of 10 of the lowest earning names are female, including; ‘Paige’ (£20,190), ‘Chelsea’ (£21,044) and ‘Bethany’ (£21,488).  The lowest earning male is ‘Reece’ (£22,952) and the second and third lowest earning male names are ‘Connor’ (£24,471) and ‘Patryk’ (£25,207).

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, comments:

“This tool has shown us that the gender pay gap is not just evident across different industries, but also ties in heavily to males and females anywhere and specifically, names.”

“There is no doubt that 2017 has been a year we’ll remember when it comes to the gender pay gap; from the BBC wage scandal to the software engineer that lost his job over sending anti-diversity internal memo at Google. It’s a shame we’re still not seeing enough evidence that these scandals are encouraging employers to create equal opportunities in the workplace. Instead, we’re seeing a ‘gender name gap’ emerging thanks to the data behind our new ValueMyName tool.“

Most Valued Irish, Scottish & Welsh Names

The ‘ValueMyName’ tool reveals that the most valued Welsh name is ‘Huw’, who earns an average of £49,333 and ‘Rhiannon’, a traditionally Welsh name, has a takehome of £25,470.

In comparison, the highest earning Scottish name ‘Bruce’ has an average salary of £48,794 and popular Scottish female name ‘Agnes’ earns £28,325.

With Irish roots, a male with the name ‘Neil’ will typically take home £45,455 on average. The most valued Irish female name ‘Ciara’ earns an average of £29,968, in contrast to the least valuable Irish female name, ‘Caitlin’, whose average salary is £25,226.

English names may dominate the most valued names list, but they aren’t the only names that appear in the top 10. The 5th most valued name is French name ‘Philippe’ (£57,787) and the 9th most valued is Indian name ‘Ashok’ (£54,830).

Andrew Hunter continued:

“Somewhat shockingly, the findings from this tool show that the names at the top of the list are all male and the names at the bottom are mostly female. It’s past time for employers to take a step back and ask themselves the question; am I making an active effort to plug this pay gap?”

“Employers across every industry need to be creating strategies, evaluating processes and pushing forward to close the gender pay gap for good. When considering new hires, it’s critical that businesses and companies ensure that both male and female recruits are receiving equal pay; the focus should be entirely on skills and talent and not, in any circumstance or any industry, on gender or name.”

Methodology: Adzuna took data from over 500,000 CVs uploaded to ValueMyCV and extracted their first name and salary, allowing us to provide an average (mean) salary for 1200 first names. Our top 10 male and female names are based on a sample size of at least 100 CVs.

How are salaries calculated in ValueMyCV?

The ValueMyCV model, which launched in 2015, uses data found in the CV and on live job market data to predict someone’s market value with a high degree of accuracy. Originally trained on a dataset of tens of thousands of real CVs, it now draws on data from over 1 million CVs and over 10m job adverts to predict someone’s market value. To determine your market rate, the tool analyses over 100 different aspects of a CV such as work experience, skills, job titles, academic background and location.

Adzuna are the market leaders in understanding UK employment data, showing salary charts for almost every keyword and location combination on our site, providing the PM and press with labour market data, and offering our Jobsworth salary predictor against every ad that doesn’t provide a salary.

About Adzuna: Adzuna is a search engine for job ads used by over 10 million visitors per month that aims to list every job, everywhere. We search thousands of websites so our users don’t have to, bringing together millions of ads in one place. By providing smarter search options and powerful data about the job market, we give jobseekers the information they need to take control of their careers. Adzuna was founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, formerly of eBay, Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla and is backed by leading Venture Capital firms Passion Capital, The Accelerator Group and Index Ventures.