Given an integer $Δ\ge 3$, let ${\cal G}_{Δ}$ be the set of connected graphs $G\neq K_{Δ+1}$ with maximum degree $Δ$ and, for $i=1,\cdots, Δ$, let $V_i(G)$ be the set of vertices of $G$ of degree $i$. \\ We prove that $\sum\limits_{i=1}^Δc_i|V_i(G)|$ is a lower bound on the independence number $α(G)$ of $G\in {\cal G}_Δ$, where $c_Δ=\frac{1}Δ$ and $ic_{i}=1-c_{i+1}$ for $i=1,\cdots,Δ-1$. Moreover, if $\varepsilon >0$ and $j\in \{1,\cdots, Δ\}$, then the inequality $α(G)\ge \varepsilon|V_j(G)|+\sum\limits_{i=1}^Δc_i|V_i(G)|$ does not hold for infinitely many graphs $G\in {\cal G}_Δ$. We also show that an independent set $I\subset V(G)$ of $G\in {\cal G}_Δ$ such that $|I|\ge \sum\limits_{i=1}^Δc_i|V_i(G)|$ can be found in polynomial time.