Much has been said in the past about talent underutilization within Effective Altruism. This is broadly acknowledged by the community to be a substantial and growing issue that needs increasing investment in solving. Nevertheless, this issue is still understated by the EA community, for numerous reasons. The easiest one to understand, and the one which this post focuses on, is simply that more EAs are underutilized than most people think. 

An analogy to unemployment

Given that I have personal experience in economics, I will be drawing an analogy between estimating EA underutilization and the computation of the unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate is taken as a fraction of the "labor force:" the share of the American population that is either working or looking for work. A person is normally only considered to be "unemployed" if they have had no job but have looked for a job within the last four weeks. However, there are many broader metrics of unemployment, which would include:

• People who want a job but have given up on finding one
• People who have looked for a job in the last year but not the last four weeks
• People who are working fewer hours than they would like, or at a less skilled job than they would like (i.e. underemployment)

In many cases, adding in these people, who would normally either be counted as employed or outside the labor force, can double the unemployment rate compared to excluding them. Similarly, I argue that the problem of underutilization is being understated because of similar decisions made in measurement, as well as selection biases.

I will next be providing a few sample subgroups of talent underutilization within Effective Altruism, and giving my own definitions for them.

Unemployed altruists

Note that here I use "unemployed" not to say that they have no job, or to say that they have no EA job, but to say that their labor and talent is not being employed to solve problems of altruistic significance. These are among the most visibly underutilized Effective Altruists, and come the closest to the original definition of "bycatch" from "Don't Be Bycatch." The article describes such a person as

Someone who's passionate about EA principles, but has little in the way of resources, tries and fails to do EA things. They write blog posts, and nothing happens. They apply to jobs, and nothing happens. They do research, and don't get that grant. Reading articles no longer feels exciting, but like a chore, or worse: a reminder of their own inadequacy.

From here, we can define "unemployed altruists" as people who are currently not contributing substantially to Effective Altruist projects, but who are still attempting to engage in a serious way at this time. This is a serious problem in itself, but this is also among the groups most likely to discuss their situation on the EA Forum, most likely to be accepted to EAGs, and most likely to interact with other EAs. I believe that there are other groups that are more neglected, because of their limited community engagement.

Discouraged altruists

By analogy from the term "discouraged worker," a discouraged altruist is someone who wants to do EA work (broadly defined, not exclusive to full-time paid positions) but has given up on finding it. It seems that many unemployed altruists are likely to become discouraged altruists if they remain unemployed for too long. However, the discouraged altruist problem is often neglected because discouraged altruists are, almost by definition, less likely to be major EA Forum contributors than unemployed altruists are.

Unattached altruists

One more group of underutilized altruists would be unattached altruists. These are people who are doing work that is at least arguably of significance to effective altruism, but who are not engaging much with organized EA communities. Now, that raises the obvious question: if they're doing EA work, what exactly makes them underutilized? The answer to this question is twofold. 

First, many unattached altruists would want to join EA groups, but have a belief, whether true or not, that EA groups are not right for them. Second, if a large number of people are living and working according to EA principles but not publicly espousing them in a big way, this could hurt the perception of EA as a movement by failing to showcase key EA successes.

Once again, because this group is defined as having limited engagement with EA communities, they are less likely to be vocal about their position compared to unemployed altruists.

Underemployed altruists

The last group of underutilized EAs that will be discussed here, though there are likely others, are underemployed altruists. Similarly to how we're using "unemployed," these people could very well be in as much work as they could want, and would not be "underemployed" in the economic sense. Here, we're saying that EA is not optimally employing their skills.

Central examples of underemployed altruists would be:

1. EAs who work on EA projects for fewer hours than they would be willing and able to
2. EAs who work on EA projects that do not optimally utilize relevant skills
3. EAs who work on EA projects on a volunteer basis when they would be able and willing to do paid EA work if available (often overlapping with 1 or 2)

Underemployed altruists are less likely to be public about being underemployed for a few reasons. First of all, they may take care not to criticize the people who are utilizing their skills for not utilizing them enough. Second of all, they generally have EA work to do other than writing on the EA Forum and so would not have as much time to write about their underemployed status. Third, they may not consciously recognize that they are underemployed altruists, with their gut-level thinking being that they do have some amount of EA work to do and shouldn't complain.

Why are these groups neglected?

I previously laid out some reasons why these groups would be less vocal about the issues they are facing. However, that's only half the question. As EAs, we should know a thing or two about selection bias and be able to identify these groups as potential examples of EA underutilization, even if many of them are too busy to tell us.

The second factor I would like to point to is that the EA community has a vested interest in not noticing it. This is because it's, for obvious reasons, inconvenient if a known problem in the community is much bigger than previously suspected. In addition, many anti-underutilization plans (e.g. promoting volunteer opportunities) could create more underemployed altruists, and recognizing this as a form of underutilization would make such plans seem less appealing.

How can these groups be less neglected?

These first few posts will mostly lay out why underutilization is a serious problem, and are not as focused on developing solutions. However, I will be including some solution proposals here, just to avoid any accusations of hypocrisy (given that I have been vocal in the past that EA spends too much time pointing out problems with the community and not enough on proposing solutions).

For starters, noticing these problems and naming them is important, and I hope that I can contribute to this here. I hope that my economics analogy is helpful, but if it isn't, I'd value the contribution of better analogies, and other such work that can build on this work.

Also, there should be a deliberate attempt on surveys such as the EA Survey to reach discouraged and unattached altruists, such as by contacting potential respondents in AI safety, biosecurity, animal welfare, etc. who work in high-impact charities or adjacent, rather than only reaching out through EA community networks. Also, adding questions about disengagement or reasons to disengage could be helpful, though this of course has to be balanced with the increased nonresponse rates from making the survey longer.

Conclusion

This is just the start of a longer mini-series of posts, within this sequence, that will describe the reasons that underutilization is a big deal. After this post is done, I will address potential ways to reduce underutilization in turn. So if I come across too much like I'm complaining without proposing solutions, first of all, I will propose solutions in each post, and second of all, I will make a set of more solution-focused posts in turn. I hope that my fairly rapid pace in writing this post, less than a week after the announcement post, will reassure you that these posts are forthcoming.

As further reassurance that I have a plan for this series, I plan to write the next post in this series about movement dilution, how it has historically been used as an excuse to limit growth, how underutilization contributes to movement dilution, and how we can reduce movement dilution from underutilization.