Don’t knock bankers for seeking rewards for little work, says John Holden, author newly-published A Cushy Number, in which Holden sets out to discover the ideal career for those who would join the idle rich – or even the idle comfortably well-off.

Holden bases his evaluation on the Cushy Number Index (CNI), a matrix that scores occupational cushiness between 1 and 100; the higher the score, the cushier the number. The CNI is the product of two key variables, the Job Demand Index and the Job Reward Index. On a scale of 1 to 10, the former scores low demand jobs highly, while the most arduous of occupations receive a 1; conversely, the latter awards poorly paid positions minimal marks while the most well-rewarded of careers receive the highest scores.

“Since the economic downturn, there has been extensive criticism of the banking sector.

“Personally, I believe that this is unfair. After all, the bankers are merely seeking – and largely succeeding – to achieve vast rewards for doing very little work. Admittedly, they are usually wholly incompetent and apt to squander billions of pounds, but they’re getting away with it. Good luck to them.”