People with white-sounding names stand a better chance of getting a job in the United States, a new survey has found.

Job-seekers with names like Greg and Anne get 50 % more replies from employers than black-sounding applicants such as Ebony and Rasheed, academics in Chicago and Boston found.

'Black' names:Tamika, Ebony, Aisha, Rasheed, Kareem, Tyrone 'White' names:Neil, Brett, Greg, Emily, Anne, Jill

They sent out 5,000 fictional applications in response to newspaper job ads, carefully picking names on the basis of birth certificates.

"Our results so far suggest that there is a substantial amount of discrimination in the job recruiting process," the professors concluded in the study, which was reported by The Associated Press.

They found that "white" applicants received one response, whether by phone call, letter or e-mail, for every 10 CVs, but "black" applicants with equal credentials received one response per 15.

The professors at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also concluded that companies purporting to be "equal-opportunity" were no more likely to respond to black CVs than other firms.

Other "white" names used by the professors included Neil, Brett, Emily and Jill, while among the "black" names were Tamika, Aisha, Kareem and Tyrone.