Does your personality type affect how much money you make? According to a study conducted by Truity Psychometrics in early 2015, it does seem to play a role. There are clear patterns between certain personality traits and income. Some traits help people move up the corporate ladder, while others may hold back their career growth.
Some people seem to have the right characteristics naturally, without much effort on their part. Others have to work harder to stay focused, organized, and consistent.
What if you have a low-earning personality type?
Before we dive into the details, this post is not meant to discourage low and average earners. While your personality is unlikely to change dramatically, you still have a lot of earning potential. Even if you do not belong to one of the high-earning personality types, you can still earn just as much as they do if you successfully copy their behavior.
It might feel unnatural and difficult at first, but it is possible to develop your inferior function with conscious effort [Source: Jung Typology, Marie-Louise von Franz]. Although a sudden change in personality is highly unlikely, personalities do tend to shift subtly over time.
Another important point to mention is that the highest earners are not necessarily the happiest. Some of the traits that make these people so successful are not always the most lovable traits, and they may negatively affect other areas of life, such as marriage, parenting, and relationships.
Trying to be someone else probably will not get you there. As Daniel Nettle put it in his book Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, the goal is to find a fruitful expression of your personality by capitalizing on your strengths and minimizing the effects of your weaknesses.
Finally, these are just statistics. You may belong to a so-called low-earning personality type and still earn more than $90K per year. Steve Jobs was an ENTP, and ENTPs were classified as average to low earners in this study. With an estimated net worth of $10.2 billion at the time of his death, do you think Steve Jobs ever worried about his “low-earning” personality type?
So who are they?
Long before this study, people had speculated online that ENTJ (Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging) must be the wealthiest of all 16 Myers-Briggs personality types, but there was no scientifically valid proof that this was the case. Truity’s research showed that ENTJs are indeed among the highest earners, but one personality type out-earned even ENTJs: ESTJ (Extraverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging).
According to Truity, ESTJs made an average of $77K per year, while ENTJs came in close second with an average of $76K per year. These numbers include both men and women, but the gender-specific charts are even more interesting.
It is no secret that men tend to earn more than women overall. However, according to this study, there were three personality types where women tended to make even more money than men of the same type: ENTJ, INTP, and INFJ. INTP and INFJ are not particularly high earners overall, but the fact that female ENTJs out-earned already high-earning male ENTJs is remarkable. This suggests that, at least in some cases, personality may be an even more important factor than gender when it comes to income.
Highest earners overall, men and women combined:
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- ESTJ ($77K per year)
- ENTJ ($76K per year)
Highest earners among men:
- ESTJ ($95K per year)
- ESFJ ($76K per year)
- ENTJ ($73K per year)
Highest earners among women:
- ENTJ ($80K per year)
- ESTJ ($68K per year)
Highest earners of all:
- ESTJ men ($95K per year)
- ENTJ women ($80K per year)
So what do they do to earn so much?
First and foremost, both ESTJs and ENTJs seem to genuinely enjoy work. According to Truity, these two types were not only the highest earners, but also the most satisfied with their jobs.
Second, with only one letter difference — S in ESTJ and N in ENTJ — both types have a lot in common. They are both:
- extraverted
- thinking
- judging
Extraversion seems to help people make more money, as almost all extraverted types reported higher average income than introverts. That makes sense. Extraversion makes it much easier to sell, network, and supervise. In this study, which also offers a lot of other interesting data, ENTJs and ESTJs tended to supervise or manage more people at work than any other type. In this regard, ENTJ was a little ahead of ESTJ, with an average of 7.33 people managed compared with 5.49 for ESTJ. This means that ENTJs and ESTJs tend to take on managerial positions.
Third, these two types were significantly less likely to be stay-at-home parents, unemployed, or retired. Both need stimulation from the external world and probably do not find idleness, or staying home with children, stimulating enough.
Fourth, both types are not particularly agreeable. They are not “Feelers” and are likely to prioritize their own interests over other people’s interests, which will usually result in more income.
Finally, they both make use of their Judging style (J). According to this study, Judging was the trait most strongly correlated with income and career achievement. For every Perceiving type (P) in this study, its corresponding Judging type (J) earned more. For example, ISTJ earned more than ISTP, ENFJ earned more than ENFP, and so on.
People with a preference for Judging (J) are better at making plans and following through than those with a preference for Perceiving (P), who prefer to wait for motivation and do not like schedules.
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